


Something Wicked

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hocus Pocus crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 10:33:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 39,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16473890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: Auradon had a penchant for keeping its magical memorabilia under tight lock and key. Tucked behind glass at the Museum of Cultural History, sealed away and powerless on the Isle of the Lost; the kingdom had long since learned its lesson from the villainous days of old, and every dangerous artifact was strictly present and accounted for.All except one, one utterly lost to the passage of time and forgotten on a dusty shop shelf far from any semblance of tight lock and key—a black flame candle.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween

Mal was used to the feeling of Evie bouncing her awake on the occasions when she overslept or slept just a little too long for her best friend's liking. It was very distinct, the way Evie would clamber up onto the bed and sit atop a lump of Mal-shaped covers before shaking her insistently by the shoulders with a  _"M! Wake up!"_  A very distinct feeling, Mal knew it to a T.  
  
This, right now, was not the feeling. The shaking of her shoulders was far too energetic, even for Evie, and the weight parked on top of her was much, much lighter.  
  
"Mal? Mal! Get up!!"  
  
And  _that_  voice, albeit cheerful, was certainly not Evie's.  
  
Grudgingly, sluggishly, Mal fought one heavy eyelid open and blinked the blurriness away in the morning light.  
  
"...Dizzy, how did you get in here?" she groaned miserably, weighed down by both sleep and Dizzy Tremaine using her as a human beanbag chair.  
  
"Evie let me in!" Dizzy said happily. "She said you needed to get up anyway. Come on Mal, it's time for breakfast! Everybody's down in the dining hall!"  
  
Dizzy's month in Auradon was nothing compared to a lifetime on the Isle of the Lost, but even still, Mal figured she'd been around long enough to at least have outgrown getting excited over something as mundane as breakfast. Apparently not.  
  
Mal wouldn't exactly have called herself awake by the time she was up, dressed, and wandering into the dining hall, but alert enough to find Dizzy at a table by the windows with Evie, Carlos, and Jay.  
  
"Morning," Evie greeted her with a smile, sliding a plate of pancakes over when Mal took her seat.  
  
"Hey, wakey-wakey," Jay teased, leaning his chair on its back legs and spotting the sleepy glaze over Mal's eyes. "We've got stuff to do today."  
  
"Yeah, you guys aren't done yet!" Dizzy told Mal.  
  
"Practically," Mal argued. "Just some last-minute touches to the gym and that's it."  
  
Mal's exhaustion came with a very good reason—late nights. And Mal's late nights came with their own very good reason—it was the most wonderful time of the year.  
  
The leaves were turning colors the VKs never even knew they could until Auradon, vivid oranges and stunning reds, bright yellows that glinted in the sunlight as they fell from the trees. There was a delightfully satisfying crunch in Mal's steps with every trek across Auradon Prep's lawn, and the early morning air was cool and crisp. The VKs' first autumn in Auradon, and, come the stroke of midnight, their first Halloween there too.  
  
None of them ever imagined any of this when the royal limousine whisked them away from the Isle of the Lost on that March afternoon, never imagined that they'd make a home in the land they came to rob and torment, to bring to ruin. Seven months later, Mal, Evie, Jay, and Carlos had all accepted themselves as a comfortable balance between Isle and Auradon, but oh, how the advent of October stirred their wicked sides.  
  
In Auradon, Halloween was a day. On The Isle, Halloween was an entity, a lifestyle, a way of being that carried through an entire month instead of a measly twenty four hours. Jane and the student council committee knew they'd made the right choice in asking Mal and her friends to captain the year's festivities, to decorate Auradon Prep with an air of All Hallows' Eve. It was one of the few times in Mal's life when she voluntarily found herself within ten feet of the word "party", her and her friends spending the last week setting up the gym for a Halloween party after the rest of the school had been properly covered with fake cobwebs, skulls, even the occasional fog machine where Jay could get away with it.  
  
Tales of Halloweens past told the VKs that the gym was often decked out with black streamers, gloomy lighting, rubber bats rigged to fly from the ceiling, but for Mal and the others, that child's play certainly wouldn't do.  _They_  were ambitious with a full-blown haunted mansion theme, transforming the school gym into what felt like the entire selection of an antique shop, Carlos expertly programming the LED scoreboards to look like paintings whose eyes followed you around the room, and of course, more of Jay's fog machines.  
  
Just like walking into a haunted house, save for those few last-minute touches Mal had mentioned to cement the ambiance.  
  
"You guys are going into town to finish shopping, right? Can I come?" Dizzy asked, her eyes lighting up behind her glasses.  
  
The young girl had never ventured from the grounds of Auradon Prep, and a Saturday morning free from the responsibilities of a school day seemed like the perfect opportunity for her to see the kingdom she'd dreamed of from the confines of her grandmother's hair salon on The Isle.  
  
"You have homework to do," Evie gently reminded her, ever the big sister figure, keeping up with everything from Dizzy's grades to her friends to whether or not she was eating enough.  
  
Sometimes Dizzy rather resembled a smaller, bouncier version of Evie, but there were the odd occasions where Mal saw a tiny bit of herself in the girl, and as such, harbored quite the not-so-secret soft spot for her.  
  
"We won't be out that long, E," she reasoned. "Dizzy can come. It's not like we're going to find much else anyway, we've already hit every place in the city."  
  
"No we haven't," Carlos said.  
  
He'd brought his laptop to breakfast with him, parking it beside his plate and spending his entire meal clicking away. Four sets of eyes looked to him, waiting for an elaboration when they were all sure in Mal's words that Auradon City had already been scoured head to toe in their search for the perfect Halloween spoils. Suddenly aware of being watched, Carlos turned his laptop around to show them.  
  
"Sally's is open," he said simply.  
  
 _"...Sally's,"_ Mal repeated, her tone serving as the verbal version of a dumbfounded smack on the head for letting herself forget such a thing.  
  
"That's right, she's always left Halloween Town once a year to come to Auradon and open her store on the day before Halloween," Evie remembered.  
  
"We've  _got_  to go to Sally's, she's bound to have  _amazing_ things there!" Dizzy implored them.  
  
Mal let a sly little smirk dance across her lips.  
  
"Come on, E. You're really gonna keep Diz stuck inside doing her homework on the one day we have a chance to meet the famous Sally?"  
  
"Pleeease, Evie?" Dizzy tugged on her sleeve. "She and Jack Skellington are practically celebrities to us Isle kids! Remember how Mal would always brag about how she personally knew Jack?"  
  
"No, but I remember how Mal would always lie through her teeth about how she personally knew Jack," Evie gave Mal a playfully scolding glance. "Okay, okay, you can come with us."  
  
 _"Yes!!"_  Dizzy clapped. "Thank you!"  
  
Mal looked across the table to the boys.  
  
"Jay? Carlos? You coming?" she asked.  
  
Carlos went back to his laptop, glancing at Mal over the top of his screen.  
  
"I'm gonna stay behind and finish the party playlist," he said with an apologetic smile.  
  
"And I've got mad pranks to pull," Jay grinned devilishly. "Goodness or no goodness, Halloween just won't be the same unless I fix a skeleton to jump out of Chad's closet."  
  
He dug into the pocket of his Tourney jacket and tossed a set of keys to Mal, so the girls could take the school's van in his absence.  
  
"Pick up something good," he told her.  
  
"Don't worry," Mal said. "We will."

* * *

 

Auradon tried, but it didn't have quite the grasp on the spirit of Halloween that only the descendants of evil and mayhem could truly have. Throughout the month, the VKs' trips found them in stores and shops that never failed to veer a little to the cheesy side. A lot of strange emphasis on giant fuzzy spiders, for some odd reason.  
  
But Sally's? Walking into Sally's place was like being back on The Isle, setting foot right inside a sorceress' apothecary.   
  
Dizzy stood on her tiptoes as she studied the bottles on a rickety shelf in a dark back corner, everything worn with age and dust.  
  
"Frog's breath, worm's wort, deadly nightshade..." she read aloud, absolutely riveted.  _"Wow."_  
  
"Let's ask if she has any eye of newt in the back," Mal joked, keeping a laugh to herself.  
  
"...M, these ingredients are  _real,"_ Evie marveled, realization dawning on her. "Is it a good idea to bring any of this back to Auradon Prep? Those kids don't know the first thing about magic. We set something up as a decoration and the next thing you know Chad Charming's accidentally turned himself into a frog."  
  
"It would be a nice change of pace," Mal dryly said.  
  
"Maybe ixnay on the potion bottles," Dizzy warily agreed with Evie.  
  
"...Yeah, you're right. Chad winds up a frog and me and my spellbook are going to be the ones wasting a perfectly good Halloween trying to change him back," Mal sighed. "Let's look around some more."  
  
There was plenty to peruse in the startlingly vast expanse of the shop, old wooden shelves and stands stretching from wall to wall while Sally sat behind the front counter and hummed pleasantly to herself. The girls kept Dizzy close as they wandered, both afraid of losing her in the maze of shelves and dimly lit atmosphere.  
  
A fake stack of weathered spellbooks meant to adorn a table (Mal checked to ensure that they really were fake), rusted candelabras, plaster skulls grinning eerily from secluded corners ( _Evie_  checked to ensure that they really were plaster), all of it would've made great additions to their haunted mansion setup back at Auradon Prep's gym.  
  
"Wow, a crystal ball," Dizzy ran her hand over the smooth sphere of glass. "And tarot cards! Just like in the gypsy tents back on The Isle!"   
  
Mal and Evie exchanged a bemused glance when Dizzy wasn't looking; only that girl could reminisce about The Isle.  
  
They eventually went back for the fake spellbooks and rusted-over candelabras, approaching the front counter with a basket full of other goodies they intended to put to good use.  
  
"Must be quite the party," an easy smile stretched across Sally's doll face as she spied their haul.  
  
"It will be," Dizzy said brightly, wide-eyed and thrilled to be face to face with Sally of Halloween Town.  
  
The counter was one long display case, with even more bottles of potions and seemingly mystical trinkets poised behind the glass.  
  
"...What's missing?" Mal wondered, crouching down and pointing to what was clearly a gap between merchandise.  
  
"Just an old candle," Sally didn't even have to look to where Mal pointed as she started ringing things up on the antique cash register. "I thought it would fit better with the others, so I moved it to the back."  
  
Mal remembered passing a shelf full of candles of all shapes and sizes, some hauntingly dripping with rivulets of dried wax, some tied with frayed fabrics, some carved with intricate runes and designs.  _That_  would be the perfect final touch to their party. Spooky candlelight, not just empty candelabras scattered about to set the mood.  
  
There was plenty of time for her to go back and look as Sally punched the register's ancient keys one by one, so Mal left Evie and Dizzy up front and wandered to the farthest reach of the shop to browse the candles again. One caught her eye right away, clearly time-worn with a gouge in its side spilling a river of wax and the designs ringing it all the way around very curious to look at.  
  
"Was it this one?" Mal asked as she returned to the front, thick candle held firmly in her hand.  
  
"It was," Sally nodded, still wearing a bewitching smile.  
  
"I like it," Mal looked to Evie. "What do you think?"  
  
Evie had no qualms whatsoever.  
  
"Let's get it," she said right away.  
  
Quite the successful shopping trip as the last of the morning softly faded into afternoon. One set of fake spellbooks, two pairs of candelabras, one crystal ball for Dizzy's dorm, several gargoyle statuettes, a jar of actual cobwebs, blind worm's sting for Mal's personal collection, one happy Dizzy, and one old candle.

* * *

 

"There's a full moon," Evie stood at one of the dorm's windows, pulling the curtains back and peering out into the dusk.  
  
"Really??"  
  
Mal was up and at her side in an instant, looking over Evie's shoulder and catching sight of the gleaming moon rising above the last lingering threads of a darkened sunset. Now, it all felt real.  
  
"Happy Halloween," Mal turned to Evie with a big smile.  
  
"Happy Halloween," Evie said back, her own smile warm and delighted.   
  
When Mal tore her gaze away from the moon she spun around and studied the alarm clock on her nightstand, the bright red numbers reading clear across the room.  
  
"Where's Dizzy?" she questioned, noting the hour.  
  
"Probably still getting dressed, there's plenty of time."  
  
Plenty of time before their Halloween party got underway, and plenty of time to head into town for a little trick-or-treating. Dizzy's first Halloween where the candy wouldn't be fuzzy and the chocolate wouldn't be rock hard, no way was Evie going to let her miss out on that. Wondering where Dizzy was led Mal straight to wondering where the boys were, dropping down distractedly on the edge of Evie's bed and texting them to get her answer.  
  
"...Unbelievable!" she threw her hand up in exasperation.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Carlos and Jay are in town, TP-ing houses."  
  
"...Leave it to Halloween to bring out a boy's bad side," Evie rolled her eyes.  
  
"Not unbelievable  _that,_  unbelievable I wasn't invited," Mal clarified with a jealous huff.  
  
 _"You_  are on trick-or-treat duty," Evie reminded her with a light shove. "And no, you're not going to scare small children out of their candy."  
  
Mal narrowed her eyes at her.  
  
"You're turning a little bit  _too_  Auradon, you know that? What happened to the mischief in your blood?"  
  
"There's plenty of mischief in my blood," Evie argued, sounding a bit offended at the insinuation.  
  
The mischief in  _Mal's_  blood enjoyed watching Evie get all riled up.  
  
"I don't buy it. You'll have to prove it to me," she taunted. "And make this night the Halloween to end all Halloweens."  
  
"Mal, I'm the Evil Queen's daughter. You really think I can't get myself into trouble on Halloween?"  
  
"Not with your goody two-shoes," Mal smirked.  
  
"We'll see," Evie promised.  
  
Dizzy eventually arrived with a knock at the door, proudly dressed as a witch, complete with flourishing cape and pointed hat.  
  
"How do I look?" she asked, giving a twirl.  
  
"Like the prettiest witch I've ever seen," Evie drew her into the room and straightened out her hat.  
  
Mal stood up, slipping her phone into her pocket and putting wistful thoughts of TP-ing out of her head.  
  
"You ready?" she asked Dizzy.  
  
"Ready!"  
  
On the Isle of the Lost there was only tricking, no treating, and the last time Mal and Evie had been showered with candy was when the limousine came to take them to their new home across the sea. The streets of the city suburbs were crawling with kids dressed up in all manner of costumes, bags and baskets already full of candy. The girls took Dizzy door to door, knocking, ringing doorbells, calling out "Trick-or-treat!" under the light of a full moon.  
  
"Did you see the look on that lady's face when she opened the door and saw Mal and Evie of The Isle standing there?" Dizzy laughed, swinging her bag of candy back and forth as they headed away from the last house they'd visited.  
  
"It's like we fought a dragon and saved the kingdom for nothing," Mal muttered, rooting through her own bag and disdainfully eyeing the licorice she'd just been given.  
  
"Well, you wanted to be bad," Evie reminded her with a smug smile. "Tormenting little old ladies in their own homes seems pretty bad to me."  
  
Mal glowered at her.  
  
"Standing on a doorstep and yelling trick-or-treat is not torment. Licorice, on the other hand, is. That lady would fit right in on the Isle of the Lost."  
  
Mal's phone buzzed then, not a text, but an alarm.  
  
"The party's going to start soon," she said, automatically knowing without even needing to look. "We should head back and give the gym a trial run."  
  
"Yeah, everything needs to go off without a hitch, and we've got to make sure Carlos has the audio set up," Evie agreed.  
  
With a party looming on the horizon Dizzy wasn't even remotely dismayed that her trick-or-treating had come to an end. It may not have been anything along the lines of a grand ball full of fashion and grace, but still, it would be an Auradon party, something she'd always dreamed of dancing in the salon with only a broom as her partner.  
  
They'd left Evie's car parked a couple blocks over, and the trio started to make their way back to it with Dizzy hurrying ahead and leading the way.  
  
"Hey, so..." Mal leaned over and whispered to Evie. "Am I the only one concerned we just gave Dizzy Tremaine an entire bag of sugar?"  
  
Evie just laughed.

* * *

 

"Diz? Test the flickering lights for us?" Mal called out across the gym.  
  
Dizzy flipped a switch next to the first switch on the wall, and sure enough, Carlos' rigging of the lights made them flicker eerily.  
  
"Awesome," Mal was going down a list she'd made on her phone of things to be checked before the party got underway.  
  
She was so proud with the work she and her friends had done. In just one week they'd transformed an ordinary school gym into the ground floor of a sprawling haunted mansion.  
  
"Food's ready," Evie announced, wheeling the last snack table into the room. "I made candy apples."  
  
"...You did not," Mal turned around, devious smile already set firmly in place.  
  
Evie did indeed.  
  
"...That is evil," Mal was very impressed.  
  
"And you dared to call me a goody two-shoes."  
  
"You called her a goody two-shoes?" Dizzy repeated incredulously, leaving the lights behind and returning to Mal.  
  
"Mal here thinks that being in Auradon is making me soft," Evie gave her best friend a condescending pat on the shoulder.  _"I_  think I'll have a few more tricks up my sleeve for her before the night is out."  
  
Dizzy giggled. Mal put her phone away and clapped her hands together to change the subject.  
  
"Okay, less than an hour before this thing kicks off. Let's get these candles lit," she said.  
  
They were scattered all over, on banquet tables as well as decorative. Mal was entertaining ideas of wickedly cutting the lights entirely later on in the evening and plunging the gym into dancing candlelight, throwing ghostly shapes and shadows on the walls for a good scare. Evie had two candle lighters ready and waiting by the snacks and she and Mal went around the gym, setting the wicks ablaze one at a time. Even with the gym lights still on it made for a creepy sight, flames dancing among the gargoyles, the skulls.  
  
"You guys did amazing," Dizzy cheered, watching it all come together. "This is going to be so much fun!"  
  
Mal stopped at the candle she'd picked out from Sally's shop the day before, nestled into a gothic black candle holder.  
  
"I almost don't want to light this one," she said. "It's so cool looking, it'd be a shame to let it burn down."  
  
Dizzy and Evie came to stand at her side. It was the last candle left.  
  
"Well, we won't let it burn all the way down," Evie said simply. "We'll just keep it lit for a little while."  
  
"Just long enough to make everyone jealous that we went to Sally's," Dizzy chuckled.  
  
"Good plan," Mal laughed. "Okay. Party on."  
  
Mal flicked the lighter to life, carefully touching it to the candle's wick and setting it alight.  
  
And then the flame went black.  
  
Three pairs of eyes went wide.  
  
An ill breeze blew. Through a room with sealed windows.  
  
"...What the...?" Evie breathed, hair tossed in the breeze.  
  
First she met Mal's eyes, then she met Dizzy's. It was clear on their faces that neither of them had an answer.  
  
Dizzy yelped when the lights above flickered and spazzed, no one anywhere near the switch rigged to make them do so. One by one, with sharp fizzles and pops, each of the fluorescent bulbs zapped out, and the gym plummeted into darkness. Only the candles lit the way as the three clustered protectively together, standing their ground against whatever in the world was churning in the darkness.  
  
With no warning the floor of the gym erupted into violent quaking, tossing the girls around with screams and shouts.  
  
"Dizzy!!" Evie frantically called, fighting to keep her balance as she reached out to her.  
  
Mal, knocked off her feet, looked up and saw lightning flashing outside the high windows, sickly green bolts followed by deafening cracks of thunder drowning out the crazed rattling of the floor beneath their feet. The world became something of a blur as it shook all around Mal, the frantic attempts of her eyes to find Dizzy and Evie in the darkness proving futile.  
  
"What's happening??" she heard Dizzy cry out.  
  
Green. Lightning shouldn't be green, Mal knew this. And it also shouldn't strike on a balmy October night without a single cloud in the sky, Mal knew this too. And what she also knew was herself, well enough to recognize the way her skin was pricking, faint electric tingles coursing their way up and down her body, the strange but unmistakable feeling of her blood warming in her veins.  
  
There was magic in the air.  
  
But as suddenly as it had come upon them, everything stopped, just as Evie toppled to the ground beside Mal with Dizzy in her arms. No more quaking, no more lightning, no more ominous breeze whipping menacingly through their hair. Only the girls and the candlelight.  
  
"...You guys okay?" Mal shakily asked, heart pounding in her chest and the tingles just beginning to subside.  
  
"I'm okay," Dizzy's voice was small.  
  
"Me too," Evie nodded, pushing the hair back out of her face.  
  
Dizzy stood back up first, breathing hard in the excitement and looking all around.  
  
"...How come nothing fell?" she questioned.  
  
No candles, no tables, no decorations; amazingly, in all the tremendous quaking, the only things knocked to the floor were somehow just Mal, Evie, and Dizzy. Mal helped her best friend to her feet, the two also marveling at how everything but them had stayed intact.  
  
"...Leave it to Sally to give 'trick candle' a whole new meaning," Mal hazarded a guess, remembering the telltale aura of magic.  
  
One final flash of the twisted lightning with its rumble of thunder illuminated their three flustered faces, and a hideous disembodied cackle echoed hauntingly throughout the entirety of the gym, sending immediate shivers down three spines.  
  
"...I don't think that's it," Evie said. "Run!"  
  
They scattered, Evie and Mal ducking underneath the snack table and Dizzy ducking underneath the refreshments. The next thunderous bang wasn't thunder, but the gym doors being thrown open, flying recklessly into the walls with a force that rattled the air. Dizzy cowered blindly, a black tablecloth both hiding her completely and obscuring her view, but Mal and Evie? Mal and Evie had no such luxury from underneath their table. They saw it all.  
  
Three women moving as one hurriedly slunk from the doorway and into the gym, dressed as if they'd just come off a shopping trip at Maleficent's with long robes and flowing dresses dragging across the floor. Mal and Evie were from the Isle of the Lost, they were no fools. The wardrobe, the cackle, the sharp and spindly fingernails, the wild glints glimmering in three pairs of eyes— _witches._  
  
"...Odds bodkins sisters, we've done it again!!" the wicked grin alight on the first witch's face was enough to give even Mal a chill as she and Evie retreated further under the table.  
  
With robes of green she gleefully wrung her hands, those dangerous nails shining like daggers in the candlelight and the stringy hair as red as the flames. Another witch, hair long and blonde and far too pretty for her chosen profession, laughed delightedly with a bounce in her step. And the third, dressed in red with deep black hair piled high on her head joined the blonde in a triumphant little dance, spinning around and around in excited circles. But then she appeared to be struck by a thought, stopping in her tracks with a clear question on her face.  
  
"...But Winnie, how have we done it??"  
  
Winnie. The one with the buck teeth and flaming hair didn't look like a Winnie. Probably a Winifred, Mal thought. Winifred was a nice, witchy name. Winifred's manically excited eyes looked around and around the gym, a terrible smile twisting her lips as she did.  
  
Oh good job, Mal. Run with the haunted mansion theme. Make the witches feel right at home.  
  
 _"...There,"_  one slender finger pointed right at Mal's candle, its black flame dancing eagerly in the dark.  
  
Evie and Mal exchanged a long, silent look.  
  
"Sarah! Mary! Come," Winifred barked, already on the move.  
  
The pretty blonde and the witch in red followed with nothing short of obedience, the three slithering right past the tables as they drew towards the candle. The witches had their backs to them now, Evie curled her fingers tightly around Mal's arm, which Mal somehow immediately knew was her best friend urging them to go get Dizzy, to make a break for it while they had the chance.  
  
"'Tis All Hallows' Eve and the black flame candle is lit!" Winifred said, her and the other two crowding around it. "Sisters, don't you see? Our time has come at last!"  
  
"...Our time to what?" Mary questioned.  
  
Winifred smacked her on the back of the head.  
  
"To finally live forever!" she snapped. "Don't you remember, you fool? The magic of the candle will last only until the sunrise—"  
  
"—And we need your spellbook to brew the potion we need to suck the life out of all the children!" Sarah blurted, bouncing happily on her feet as her memory was jogged.  
  
That didn't sound good. Evie only held Mal tighter.  
  
"We  _have_  to get Dizzy," she fretfully whispered.  
  
Mal nodded, and carefully started to crawl forward, daring to leave her cover and creep over to the refreshment table. Stopped in her tracks by the sound of Mary sniffing at the air like some sort of crazed bloodhound.  
  
"...Winnie, I know just where to start," she said with one wheezing laugh.  
  
And to Mal's horror, she turned and pointed right to Dizzy's hiding place. Dizzy had no clue, shrouded as she was, no clue that the witches had followed Mary's nose right to her. Mal hastily ducked back under the table, bringing a finger to her lips to signal Evie to hush and not do anything drastic.  
  
"A  _child,"_  Sarah said reverently.  
  
Dizzy had a clue now, tucked underneath the tablecloth and squeezing her eyes shut as she braced herself for whatever might happen next.  
  
For the witches to quietly count to three and then flip the table over, spilling plastic cups and stirring spoons to the floor in a terrible clatter. Dizzy seemed to scream, leap to her feet, and run all in one single motion. But Winifred caught her with a smile and one effortless reach, pulling Dizzy to her side and keeping her there.  
  
"Do stay awhile, won't you?" she grinned.  
  
Winifred grinned. Sarah and Mary leered.   
  
Instincts Evie didn't even know she had readied her to leap forward and dash to Dizzy's rescue, but Mal held her back.  
  
Dizzy knew witches, The Isle was full of them. But on the Isle of the Lost there was a barrier against magic and a rampant tendency for villains to be washed up. Here, in Auradon, there was no magic barrier, and these witches looked far from washed up.  
  
"Tell us thy name, child," Winifred spoke easily.  
  
Dizzy swallowed hard.  
  
"D...Dizzy Tremaine."  
  
"Tremaine. Positively wicked name," Mary said admirably.  
  
"And the year?" Winifred asked of Dizzy.  
  
Dizzy could see Mal and Evie just a few feet away, underneath the snack table and watching like hawks.  
  
"...2018," she timidly answered.  
  
"Twenty-five years..." Winifred mused, tapping a thoughtful finger to her chin.  
  
"Better than three hundred," Sarah snickered.  
  
Winifred spun Dizzy around the way Evie spun clothing racks around and around at the Auradon Mall, studying, contemplating, sizing things up.  
  
"...Yes, I think she'll do quite nicely," she said, the gears in her mind obviously whirring and calculating. "Such a spirited little life force!"  
  
"...Me? Spirited?? Pfft," Dizzy nervously scoffed.   
  
"Mm. Quite. Sisters! We haven't a moment to lose!" Winifred barked with a flourish of her robes. "I  _need_  my spellbook."  
  
Sarah's wide eyes scanned the room as her head lolled in one big circle.  
  
"'Tis not here," she said simply.  
  
"I can see that, you ninny!" Winifred tensely tightened her hold on Dizzy. "My poor book, lost and alone..."  
  
She sniffed feebly before seeming to steel her resolve.  
  
"Come, sisters. 'Tis another strange new world we've found ourselves in, but we are smarter and wiser than we were before."  
  
"Oh, thou art smartest and wisest of us all, Winnie," Mary said with a simpering grin.  
  
"Quiet, I need to concentrate," Winifred waved her off with the hand that didn't have Dizzy's arm in a vise-like grip.   
  
Dizzy didn't heed the witch's request for quiet.  
  
"There's, um, there's  _a lot_  of spellbooks in Auradon, you know," she said.  
  
Mal and Evie could spy the terrible gleam in Winifred's eyes from all the way under the table as she turned a sneaking smile on Dizzy.  
  
"...Auradon, you say? And a clever little child like you would know exactly where to look for my precious spellbook, wouldn't you?"  
  
"Well, no, but—"  
  
"Let's take the child, Winnie!" Sarah eagerly suggested. "We'll find your book, mix the potion...have a little snack..."  
  
Three sinister gazes trained themselves right on poor Dizzy.  
  
"Oh, I don't  _think_  so!!"  
  
And then Evie was loose.  
  
Mal could hold her back no longer, and Evie charged to the rescue. Funny. Mal never imagined she'd ever see a princess tackling a witch.   
  
Sarah and Mary leapt backwards with startled yelps as Winifred went down, Evie sitting atop her and wrestling her to the floor.  
  
"Dizzy!" Mal launched herself out from under the table next, rushing protectively to Dizzy's side.  
  
"Winnie!  _Winnie!_  More children!" Mary shouted.  
  
"Confound it all!!" Winifred swatted wildly at Evie. "Get them!"  
  
"What  _fun!"_  Sarah giggled, starting for the girls with Mary at her side.  
  
Mal pushed Dizzy behind her, squaring off with the witches herself.  
  
"I'd rethink that next step," she warned.  
  
"Ooh, a brave one, sister Sarah," Mary said with a smirk.  
  
"She'll be delicious," Sarah licked her lips.  
  
Mal felt it before anything else, the prick of untold magic in the air ghosting again over her skin. Dizzy  _saw_  it before anything else, threatening sparks leaping to life around Winifred's fingertips. Sparks that grew into full-fledged bolts, zapping Evie with a sizzle and sending her flying.  
  
"Evie!!" Dizzy cried out.  
  
"Go..." Mal's wide and stunned eyes were locked on Evie as she blindly reached behind her and pushed Dizzy back towards the doors. "Dizzy! Go!!"  
  
Dizzy didn't have to be told twice. Winifred got to her feet with a huff, dusting off her robes and fixing her hair. Mal darted around the two women in front of her, racing to Evie's side.  
  
"You okay??" she asked.  
  
Evie got up with a pathetic little cough.  
  
"...How's my hair?" she asked right back, voice hoarse.  
  
She was fine.  
  
"Guys! Can we go??" Dizzy fretted, hovering near the gym doors with her fingers curled tight around the handle.  
  
"What's thy hurry?!" Winifred seemed to cruelly tease.  
  
"Stay and play a while," Sarah egged them on.  
  
The witches regrouped, slowly advancing on Mal and Evie like wolves.  
  
"Games! Perfect, sister Sarah," Winifred clapped, her buck-toothed grin shining. "Here's one I do rather enjoy... _tag."_  
  
Her lightning magic zapped through the air with the snap and crack of a whip, striking Mal and Evie and knocking them off their feet.  
  
"Shocking," Mary said.  
  
She and Sarah laughed maniacally together, with Winifred trying to keep a stern, straight face for a only a moment before breaking and joining in on the witchy cackling.  
  
Evie sat up with a groan. Mal, a growl.  
  
"...Tag," her eyes blazed to life in a flash of emerald. "...I'm it."  
  
Throwing a hand out in front of her Mal cast a shower of flames at the sisters, fire lapping at the air in front of them and sending them jumping back with three identical shrieks.  
  
"'Tis a rival witch!" Winifred hissed.  
  
Mal helped Evie to her feet, staring the witches down with a glower.  
  
"I prefer sorceress," she flatly said. "Evie, run."  
  
Evie turned on her heels and rushed to Dizzy by the doors, with Mal keeping her hand out and threatening more fire as she slowly backed in that direction too.  
  
"Well, ladies, it's been fun, but we really should get going now. You know, you have a spellbook to not find, we have a Halloween to get through in one piece, so...later."  
  
Mal's big sendoff was another volley of searing flames, keeping the witches at bay with fearful bellows long enough for the girls to make a break for it. Out the doors and down the corridors they went, taking every twist and turn they could find to keep the sisters off their tail. That bag of sugar from earlier in the night was paying off now, keeping Dizzy racing ahead of them as they ran for their lives.  
  
When the flames cleared, and wits were gathered, Sarah gazed forlornly out across the gym.   
  
"They got away," she pouted.  
  
"Gah! Why must terrible children always come in threes?!" Winifred demanded of no one in particular, beginning to aimlessly pace the floor a bit. "Mark my words, their lives will be the first to be mine!"  
  
"...You mean ours?" Mary timidly corrected.  
  
"...Ah. Yes.  _Ours."_  
  
"But Winnie, didst thou not hear the girl? 'Tis a land called Auradon, not Salem. Your spellbook—"  
  
"Is here," Winifred interrupted Mary, tapping a thoughtful finger to her chin. "I can feel it. My darling book is here, trapped in a land without magic."  
  
Sarah's pretty face screwed up in disgust.  
  
"Bleh," she stuck her tongue out at the thought.  
  
"Indeed," Winifred curiously spied the black flame candle. "We must hurry, for my book is not far and our time is short. Sarah, Mary...we fly."

* * *

 

Mal's fist banged so hard on the boys' door that it almost seemed like she might break it down.  
  
"M, I don't think they're back," Evie anxiously bit her lip as she stood and held Dizzy by the shoulders.  
  
Mal tried the knob and found it moving with ease, unlocked. She swung the door open, getting only a split-second glimpse inside the boys' dorm room before a wailing skeleton came flying at her face, eliciting screams from her, Evie, and Dizzy.  
  
"Jay!!" Mal yelled, fuming, batting Jay's prank out of the way and sending it swinging wildly on its string as she charged into the room.   
  
Evie and Dizzy followed her in, but Jay left pranks behind on Halloween like most people leave messages behind on answering machines. He and Carlos were nowhere to be seen, the room empty save for Dude, parked on a pillow on Carlos' bed.  
  
"Happy Halloween!" he cheered, tiny doggy bat wings stuck on his back.  
  
Mal ignored him.  
  
"I don't believe this, they're still out TP-ing!" she spun around to face Evie.  
  
"You guys look frazzled," Dude casually noted.  
  
"Gee, Dude, it's probably because we're frazzled!!" Mal snapped.  
  
"M, don't take it out on him," Evie softly said.  
  
"Yeah, Mal..." Dizzy frowned.  
  
Mal sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of her nose.  
  
"I'm sorry, Dude. You know, it's just, I spent forever helping to set up the Halloween party for tonight, and now it's party called on account of witches."  
  
"But witches on Halloween are a classic," Dude talked as he scratched behind his ear. "They brew their potions, they ride their brooms, they fly in front of the moon. Like the Sanderson sisters."  
  
"...The who?"  
  
"The  _what?"_  
  
Evie and Mal asked their questions at the same time. Dude just blinked innocently at them.  
  
"...Dude, what do you know?" Mal prodded.  
  
"Oh, lots. You learn a bunch wandering around as the campus mutt."  
  
"Like...about people called the Sanderson sisters," Evie said, drawing closer to Dude.  
  
"Yep. Sarah, Mary, and...I wanna say Wendy?"  
  
 _"...Winnie?"_  Mal corrected in astonishment.  
  
"Pretty sure it's Wendy. Eh, doesn't matter. They're only an urban legend," if dogs could shrug, Dude would be doing so.  
  
Mal crossed her arms.  
  
"So tell us a story."  
  
Dude was rather wary of the way Mal glared him down, very familiar with that particular look from her.  
  
"What? It's just a story about three witches who were looking to stay young and immortal by brewing a potion to steal the souls of all their town's children for themselves, but they were caught and ended up hanged by the townspeople centuries ago. Then there was a curse, and this magical black flame candle, and if a virgin lights it during a full moon on Halloween, it's supposed to summon the sisters from the dead."  
  
Mal miraculously turned paler than usual.  
  
"...Stealing the souls of children to prolong their own lives. Would you say that puts them above or below my own mother on the evil scale?" she asked Evie.  
  
The noise Dizzy made was a cross between a whimper and a squeak. Evie combed comforting fingers through the colorful ends of her hair.  
  
"Aw Dizzy, they aren't real," Dude said flippantly, standing from his pillow and stretching.  
  
"...The potion. The spellbook," Mal was thinking aloud, ignoring Dude. "They said they needed the potion to drain kids of their life and they need the spellbook to make the potion."  
  
"Wow, you Isle kids really get invested in this Halloween stuff, don't you?" Dude said.  
  
Now it was Evie's turn to ignore the dog.  
  
"No spellbook, no potion," she followed Mal's train of thought. "If we can get to it first..."  
  
"But Auradon is  _full_ of spellbooks, remember??" Dizzy reminded them. "Where are you ever going to find theirs?"  
  
Mal could almost physically feel the click of the lightbulb flashing to life above her head.  
  
"...Not in Auradon."  
  
Evie gasped, understanding completely.  
  
"The kingdom may be full of spellbooks, but there's only one place to go to find  _evil_  spellbooks," she said.  
  
"...The Isle of the Lost," Dizzy gulped.  
  
Dude's idly wagging tail suddenly froze in place.  
  
"...Wait, you guys are just messing around, right? You're not really going to go back to The Isle, are you? It's only a spooky story, there aren't actually any Sanderson sisters."  
  
Evie's fried hair said otherwise. Mal met her best friend's eyes as the conversation intensified around the two of them and Dizzy.  
  
"We have to get that spellbook before they do," she firmly said.  
  
Evie nodded grimly.  
  
"...Then it looks like we're going home," she murmured.  
  
"...Hoo boy," Dizzy sighed.  
  
"Not you, Diz," Mal said right away. "You, the witches, and their spellbook all in one place is so not happening."  
  
"...You guys aren't messing around," Dude realized. "Are you crazy?? You can't go back to The Isle!"  
  
The poor thing was practically tuned out entirely now.   
  
"Spellbooks are useless on The Isle. Most of them end up in the junk shops when they're not being used as paperweights," Mal was scheming it out.  
  
"Jafar's place and Madam Medusa's pawn shop would be our best bets," Evie added.  
  
"Then let's go, E. Those three almost definitely have a head start on us."  
  
Dizzy clutched tightly at Evie's hands.  
  
"I have to stay here?" fear flickered in her eyes.  
  
"It's safer for you here," Evie gently assured her, squeezing her hands back in comfort.  
  
"Dude, you're on guard dog duty," Mal pointed a finger at him and narrowed her eyes, utterly meaning business.  
  
Dude couldn't believe any of it. Not Mal and Evie losing it over superstitious Halloween tales, and not being employed as a furry babysitter.  
  
"Me? On guard duty?? I sleep for ten hours a day, how do you expect me to guard?"  
  
"You have teeth. Use them," Mal scowled and started back for the door.  
  
Evie hugged Dizzy close, feeling the urgency of the situation and knowing there wasn't really time to draw out goodbyes.  
  
"We'll be back," she promised. "First we find the spellbook, then we figure out how to deal with the witches."  
  
"What if we threw some water on them?" Dizzy suggested.  
  
Mal raised an eyebrow, fingers curled and waiting around the doorknob.  
  
"What good is that going to do?" she questioned.    
  
Dizzy met her with an innocent shrug.  
  
"I don't know, maybe...maybe they'd melt or something," she puzzled it over.  
  
"Why in the world would water make them melt?"  
  
"I'm just brainstorming here!"  
  
Evie hurried to Mal's side, ready to go. Dude wondered if he'd be in trouble when Carlos and Jay found out that he stood idly by and let the girls scurry off to the Isle of the Lost to go and chase fairytales.  
  
"Come on you guys, it's just a bunch of hocus pocus!!" he barked.  
  
"Dizzy, lock the door and wait for the boys to come back," Evie said.  
  
"If you get bored, re-rig that skeleton to go flying at  _their_  faces," Mal added with no small touch of bitterness.  
  
Evie smacked her on the arm, and then they were gone. Dizzy stood and just watched the door for a moment, wishing she'd see her friends walking back through, but quickly gave up the wistful thoughts and took a seat next to Dude on the bed. The dog laid himself down and rested his head on Dizzy's knee, looking up at her with his curious brown eyes.  
  
"...Sooo, what's new?”

* * *

 

When the royal limousine drove Evie and her friends away from The Isle seven wonderful months ago, she never imagined she'd ever be going back. Standing at her window and gazing out into the moonlit night, she was more than thankful that the island couldn't be seen from her room. Mal caught Evie's despondent reflection in the glass.

"...An hour, E. Tops. We'll be out before you know it."  
  
"...As many hours as it takes to keep Dizzy and the rest of Auradon's kids safe," Evie bravely said. "The Sanderson sisters might be a little on the looney side, but it's always a mistake to underestimate a villain."  
  
Mal let out a forlorn sigh.  
  
"Agreed...and if anything happens to Dizzy, it'll be my fault for getting that stupid candle in the first place."  
  
"Oh, Mal..."  
  
Evie abandoned her post to cross the room and meet Mal face to face.  
  
"Would you ever forgive me if I let anything happen to her?" Mal wondered, her voice soft.  
  
"M, you'd never let anything happen. I know that for a fact. Look, even if we don't get to the spellbook first, the witches still need to brew their potion, right?"  
  
"...Right," Mal mulled it over. "Right, there's still time. But Dude had a point. Witches brew potions, they ride brooms, and they fly. They may be looney, but that Winifred is obviously the brains of the group, I bet she's already had them raid the janitor’s office and they've booked it on broomsticks."  
  
"We need to get to The Isle just as fast. But a car's just not going to cut it, especially not from here to the coast, so how do we—?"  
  
"I have an idea about that," Mal interrupted.  
  
The gleaming shine in Mal's eyes. Infamous. On most occasions, Evie rather liked it, the sign of a plan coming together in her best friend's head.  
  
One of these days she'd learn to be cautiously wary of it.

* * *

 

"...M, are you sure about this?"  
  
"No, not in the slightest."  
  
Evie gulped, and tightened the helmet strap under her chin. She supposed she should just be grateful they were only parked in the grass behind the school, and that Mal hadn't opted to take a running start off a cliff.   
  
Evie always liked the Vespa. Before their friend the king and his flair for extravagant gifts had given Evie her car, his gift to Mal was always how she and Evie got around, going into town for shopping and movies and lunch. Wind and scenery rushing past, an intense feeling of freedom, it was wonderful. But Vespas were made for roads, not for the skies. Sitting at the helm with Evie's arms around her waist, Mal reached into her pocket and pulled out a little remote, small enough to be fitted into her palm.  
  
"What's that?" Evie asked, peering over Mal's shoulder.  
  
"The key to opening the magic barrier so we can get out once we've gotten in," Mal said simply.  
  
"Is it now? And where exactly did you get that?"  
  
"Ben's office."  
  
"Ben's office. By which you mean you  _broke in_  to Ben's office and stole royal property, right?"  
  
"Is it breaking in if the door is always left unlocked? I don't think so."  
  
Mal put the remote away, making sure it was snug in her pocket, and fastened her own helmet.  
  
"Is now a good time to mention I'm not entirely sure how I feel about heights?" Evie anxiously asked, holding Mal tighter.  
  
"It's not," Mal revved her Vespa to life.  
  
She could play cool and collected all she wanted, but the fact of the matter was that she was seriously about to enchant her Vespa to take to the sky, flying miles above the earth to speed them to the Isle of the Lost. And she wasn't even entirely sure that it would work. Or that they wouldn't drop unexpectedly out of the sky and plummet to their deaths.  
  
"Alright, Evie. Hang on."  
  
No trouble there. Evie stifled a nervous little whimper but buried her head against Mal's back, afraid to look. Mal took a deep breath, blowing it out shakily between her lips and tightening her grip on the handles.  
  
 _"...Noble steed, proud and fair, you shall take me anywhere,"_  she recited.  
  
Evie heard it, the telltale tinkling sound of a magic spell coming to life. Mal saw it, a shower of green sparks around her bike and a hum in the air that she sometimes imagined only she could hear.  
  
"...Okay. Here goes nothing."  
  
The Vespa lurched forward and quickly zipped up to speed under Mal's control. This, Evie was familiar with; the wind, the acceleration, the rumble and bump of the ground under the wheels. Then the lurch forward became a lurch upward, the rumble and bump instantly smoothing out as the ground no longer became a problem.  
  
As the earth fell away entirely.  
  
"Are we flying??" Evie questioned, eyes shut tight.  
  
Mal peeking one eye open reminded her that she was the one driving and probably shouldn't have had her eyes fearfully shut tight too.  
  
"We're flying," she said, watching somewhat morbidly as they rose higher and higher.  
  
With the shortest distance between two points being a straight line, they'd be hitting the sea in no time at all. Mal sped them up, zooming faster and faster through the air. The roar of wind whooshing past Evie's ears was not the comfort that it usually was, and she didn't dare glance up or open her eyes, until...  
  
"...Evie, look!"  
  
Evie's heart dropped down to her stomach, afraid of what she might see. Maybe the sky-bound scenery falling away around them as the magic unexpectedly puttered out and they began that terrifying plummet back to earth. But no. Dredging up her courage, Evie opened her eyes and lifted her head—finding the moon full and bright and the wispy clouds appearing almost close enough to touch.  
  
The moon, the stars pinpoints of light dotting themselves all across a canvas of black, and Mal and Evie right there in the center of it. When Evie first came to Auradon, she was relieved and ecstatic to just be able to see the sky. She never imagined how incredible and awe-inspiring it would be to see the sky from  _within_  the sky.  
  
Already they were passing over the heart of the kingdom, the lights of Auradon twinkling underneath them as the city would not be sleeping early tonight with the thrill of Halloween festivities in the air. No wonder witches flew.  
  
It was a magical moment marred and soured by an ugly truth, the truth that they were on a mission, not sightseeing. They had come face to face with brand new villains and thrown headfirst into fighting against their wicked schemes. There was no time for them to dwell on it, on evil candles bringing dead and buried witches back to life, nor was there time to take in the scenery. The bay was in sight, and with it, the Isle of the Lost.  
  
The Isle of the Lost, where Winifred was smacking her sisters away and out of the dogpile they were smothering her under. A land without magic, Winifred could sense it from the other side of the sea. She'd just—in her hurry to rescue her spellbook—neglected to realize that flying was a no-go in a land without magic. Three broomsticks had hit some sort of invisible barrier and dropped from the sky like rocks, taking the sisters with them and crash landing the trio in a pile of garbage bags in some grungy alleyway.  
  
"Wha' happened?" Mary asked in a daze.  
  
"We fell," Sarah giggled like the situation was decidedly hysterical and blew the hair out of her face.  
  
"Get up, you idiots!" Winifred batted at them some more, trying to wriggle herself out from under their weight. "We haven't the time!"  
  
She all but leapt to her feet after shoving the other two off, eyes narrowing as she took a long look around the alley and got her bearings.  
  
"...The world keeps changing on us, sisters. Indeed, 'tis not Salem," she noted icily. "I wonder if those wretched children hadst something to do with this, that Max, and that  _Dani."_  
  
Winifred sneered around the name like it left a bad taste in her mouth.  
  
"Twenty-five years, Winnie. They aren't children anymore," Sarah pointed out after stumbling to her feet too. She was met with a scowl.  
  
"Hmph. How fortunate for them. Yet now we have  _new_  brats to contend with. Dizzy, Evie, and..."  
  
She didn't quite think she'd caught the name of the other one, of the little witch-sorceress who dared to stand her own against them.  
  
"And Mal?"  
  
In the gloom they didn't see him standing there, hunched over a trash can a few feet away and rooting around inside without a care in the world. Like three startled cats the witches reared back with a bit of a hiss, Winifred forgetting about the land without magic and raising her hands as if readying to zap.  
  
"...My bad," he muttered, realizing he'd scared them. "You just can't talk about Dizzy and Evie without Mal being somewhere in there too. That's like talking about peanut and jelly without the butter. Wait..."  
  
He frowned to himself, puzzling over if that was right and looking like puzzling was quite a feat for him. Winifred couldn't say she wasn't intrigued.  
  
"This...Mal, was it? Is she—"  
  
"Short, purple hair, scary beyond all reason? Yep, that's Mal," the boy nodded and shoved a whole boiled egg into his mouth with the hand that wasn't sifting through garbage. "Cool costumes, by the way."  
  
Around a mouth full of egg it took the sisters a moment to decipher the meaning of  _"Coo cofftume, buh the wuh."_  
  
"...Winnie, All Hallows' Eve hath become nothing more than a joke, remember?" Mary tugged urgently at her sister's sleeve. "With children dressing up in costumes and begging for  _candy."_  
  
"I'm looking for an eyepatch. Going as a pirate," the boy grinned. "I mean, the back of my head still hurts from Uma smacking me there and yelling 'Gil, you  _are_  a pirate!!' but, you know."  
  
A shrug from him as he went back to his digging.  
  
"...Big and strong," Sarah was sizing him up with a gleam in her eye. "He wouldst make a lovely meal."  
  
"No one will be making  _cheese spread_  if we do not find my book!" Winifred snapped.  
  
"Why not ask the child, Winnie?" Mary pleasantly suggested.  
  
A fair enough suggestion.  
  
"You there, child," Winifred pointed a finger and a deadly sharp nail. "I'm looking for my book. Where on this miserable island would it be kept?"  
  
"Bound in human skin, pages of spells, one eye on the cover, thou cannot miss it," Mary helpfully added.  
  
"Sorry, I don't do books," Gil brushed every word off as he fished around the trash can.  
  
Winifred fumed.  
  
"...What about  _hanging by thy thumbs?!"_  she lunged for him in all his unhelpful incompetence, but was promptly held back by her sisters, each grabbing an arm.  
  
"Now now Winnie, we mustn't lose our heads!" Mary implored.  
  
"Why mustn't we?!"  
  
Because even something as dumb as a bag of rocks still had its uses when push inevitably came to shove.

* * *

 

Mal proved smarter than the average witch as they crossed the sea, flying her Vespa lower and lower as The Isle grew closer, knowing the magic would cease when they hit the barrier. By the time they passed through they were just level with the road, landing with only the slightest of bumps and continuing to drive on. Evie couldn't believe they were really back. It was as if she could feel the darkness in the air like it was a choking cloud of smog. Mal slowed to a stop, letting the bike idle underneath them with its little rumble.  
  
"...We're here," she grimly said.  
  
Nothing had changed. Not that it ever could be expected to.  
  
"...Let's be careful, Mal," Evie quietly said.  
  
"This is The Isle, the Sanderson sisters won't have their powers here."  
  
"No, I meant that this is The Isle, and there are still a lot of villain kids here who didn't want to make the move to Auradon and think we're traitorous do-gooders now."  
  
"...Oh, right."  
  
"Not to mention there's a certain mistress of evil jilted out of a magic wand who will want to have a word or two with us."  
  
"...And several words with me for a certain lizard incident," Mal's blood ran cold.  
  
As if the lizard thing was her fault. In Mal's opinion, her mother owed her a thank you for convincing Fairy Godmother to change her back and ship her off to The Isle again instead of leaving her imprisoned behind scales and a forked tongue.  
  
"...Okay, so. In and out," Mal murmured.   
  
"Mal? How will we know which spellbook is the sisters'?"  
  
"We'll probably just have to go through them, find the one that has this life spell they're so bent on getting. There aren't very many here to begin with, E. And villains tend to hang on to the ones that are theirs. Anything else would have to end up in the junk shops, it shouldn't be a long search."  
  
There was something about it that wasn't clicking in Evie's head. Something that didn't click, until suddenly, it did.  
  
"...Mal."  
  
There was a distinct note of dread in Evie's voice as she fearfully clenched at Mal's arm, so much dread that Mal cut the engine and turned herself in her seat to face Evie.  
  
"What? What is it?" she asked.  
  
"...The witches had a magic candle meant to bring them back from the dead. It didn't end up at some old junk shop, somehow it ended up at Sally's. Sally's, one of the best collections of magic and mischief in the whole world. So, if the witches had an evil spellbook with the recipe for a potion to suck the life out of kids, I don't think it would end up in a junk shop either. It would end up at—"  
  
"Dragon Hall," Mal realized with a slow gasp, catching Evie's drift. "...The Athenaeum of Evil."  
  
The school's forbidden library, an equally impressive collection of magic and mischief. Guarded and watched over by a spider big enough to eat Dude for breakfast. Of course.  
  
"...Well, I certainly can't think of a better way to spend a Halloween," Mal sighed.  
  
"Halloween on The Isle. This place will be swarming with villain kids up to no good, Mal."  
  
"Then we've got our work cut out for us. If the Sanderson sisters get the spellbook first, both Isle  _and_ Auradon are in danger."  
  
"So again it's up to us to save the kingdom from villains."  
  
Mal smiled grimly and brought her Vespa back to life with its revved-up growl.  
  
"Maybe someday they'll give us a medal."

* * *

 

"And over there is a warehouse, and over here is...another warehouse," Gil pointed as he led the three witches down the street. "Oh! And down there is...no, wait, that's a warehouse too."  
  
Like a dimwitted dog he guided them up and down The Isle, Mary sniffing out all the children, Winifred sniffing out her spellbook. No magic barrier could keep her from sensing it, that was like saying a magic barrier could keep her from feeling her own black heart beating. But there on the island, the sense was weak. Like peeking through a keyhole, or pressing an ear to a door; very quiet and very focused did she have to stay to latch on to the presence of her book.  
  
Focused was a hard thing to be with the Gil boy rattling on and on.  
  
"Hey! This is where Harry hung me by my ankles so Uma could have a piñata for her fifteenth birthday party!"  
  
"Patience, sister dear," Mary patted Winifred's shoulder with a simpering smile, practically feeling the hate boiling within her. "Remember, if thee strangles him then it's one less child to keep us young and beautiful forever."  
  
"Bah! We shall need much more than  _this_  ignorant oaf to keep us young and beautiful!" Winifred made a pinching grab for Mary's ear. "Why art thou not smelling children, sister?!"  
  
Sarah laughed at her sister's torture. A rather wicked sense of humor she was gifted with.  
  
"I don't know, Winnie, I don't know!" Mary whimpered.  
  
Gil turned around, walking backwards down the street.  
  
"Oh, that's probably because they're all up at Dragon Hall," he said easily. "That's usually where everyone ends up on Halloween. You know, in between tricks. Except me and the pirates, of course. I transfered over to Serpent Prep a while back and there's always been this whole Serpent Prep/Dragon Hall rivalry going on. If Dragon Hall had a mascot, we'd be stealing it. I mean, they've got the giant spider in front of the evil library, but—"  
  
"Giant spider??" Sarah repeated with glee.  
  
"Evil library?" Winifred picked a different part of that sentence to repeat. "Where is this Dragon Hall of which you speak?!"  
  
Gil jabbed a thumb over his shoulder.  
  
"That way."  
  
"Ah!!" Winifred looked excitedly to both of her sisters. "The very direction my darling book has been pulling me in since we arrived!"  
  
"'Tis in the hall of dragons!" Sarah clapped her hands.  
  
"I knew thou wouldst find it Winnie, I just knew it!" Mary gushed, trying to keep from rubbing at her sore ear.  
  
"If only we had our magic, we could fly there at once," Winifred lamented the setback, itching to retrieve her book. "But no matter now. Take us to Dragon Hall, Ghoul!"  
  
"It's Gil."  
  
"...Gil, yes. Quite."

* * *

 

"Uh-oh..." Mal muttered under her breath.  
  
Something told her not to ride the Vespa all the way into the depths of The Isle. Something told her to park blocks away and continue silently with Evie on foot, she just didn't know what that something was. Turned out that the something was some deep-rooted instinct for self-preservation that the safety of Auradon couldn't rust after only seven months. No, seven months wasn't enough time for that, but it was enough time to make Mal and Evie forget how their old school was the go-to place to be on Halloween. As if any self-respecting villain kid was going to hang anywhere else but a graveyard on the spookiest night of the year.  
  
Unfortunately for Mal and Evie, the Isle of the Lost was full of self-respecting villain kids. All of them too proud and stubborn to be "sissified" by taking the king up on his offer to live in Auradon, and all of them crowding campus grounds in a villainous Halloween party while the girls stayed a good many yards away and ducked behind a low brick wall.  
  
"How are we supposed to get in there?" Evie harshly whispered.  
  
"...Not through the front doors, apparently."  
  
Scratchy music blared through what had to have been an ancient and decrepit radio, piercing Mal and Evie's ears even at a distance. Kids made like Jay and Carlos in an Isle flair for mischief and TP'd the tomb of Dragon Hall with wild shouts and hollers, caring not that they'd all be forced into grueling cleanup duty by the headmaster Dr. Facilier in the morning. TP-ing, spray painting, kicking over headstones and smashing gray, rotting pumpkins—Mal would almost daresay she missed it a little bit. So what if she had chosen good? Halloween and a full moon brought out the Isle in her blood that Auradon might not ever be able to cleanse, let alone cleanse in less than a year.  
  
"...We can pretend that we're back," she said to Evie.  
  
Evie wasn't quite sure she followed. Mal saw it on her face.  
  
"I'm not saying we just waltz right up there, obviously we have to at least try to sneak in. But  _if_  we're caught,  _if_  someone sees us—"  
  
"We act like we've turned our backs on Auradon and returned to evil??" Evie was startlingly appalled.  
  
"Look, would you rather put on a show or get eaten alive for being one of Auradon's prissy prudes?" Mal argued. "We  _do not_  have the time for these guys, E. Getting into the Athenaeum of Evil is going to be hard enough without having to cut through a crowd."    
  
How Evie loved it when the spark of an idea flashed to life above her head.  
  
"...Or, there's always  _my_ way," she said.  
  
Mal frowned. The spark of an idea flashing to life above her best friend's head was always something to behold with terrible wonder.  
  
"Your way?" she questioned.  
  
Evie's way.  
  
The fashionable way.

* * *

 

Evie was playing with fire, plain and simple. Insisting they lay low and then breaking into Maleficent's bargain basement were not the most complimentary of plans.  
  
"It's the spirit of Halloween," Evie whispered as she dug through racks of once-magical robes and cloaks there on the ground floor shop of Maleficent's castle. "And this way, we won't be recognized."  
  
"My mom will recognize me when she comes down those stairs and catches me here," Mal said fretfully, too fretfully to search the shop for an outfit of her own. "We shouldn't be here, E. I'd rather take my chances sneaking."  
  
"And how are we supposed to sneak past the Sanderson sisters, M? If we're going to be here on The Isle, we need disguises. Otherwise we're just sitting ducks."  
  
Sitting ducks. Mal nervously eyed the stairwell leading up to the rest of the castle. To her old home.  
  
Her mother went to bed early on Halloween. Passed out cold and started on her evil sleep before the wicked festivities got too wild and kept her up all night. Nothing would change the routine this year. Maleficent would still be up the stairs, fast asleep with her doors locked tight. But Mal couldn't think of her as sleeping upstairs, Mal could only think of her as  _lurking_  upstairs.  
  
"M..."   
  
Fear and apprehension were not things Evie was used to seeing on Mal's face. Just an hour ago Mal had stood and fought off witches from the unknown and bore nothing close to fear in her expression.  
  
"Mal."  
  
Only a second try of her name was able to tear her gaze away from the stairs and the slumbering dragon waiting at the top.  
  
"She'll have to go through me to get to you," Evie firmly said.  
  
Mal laughed halfheartedly.  
  
"That, she would gladly do."  
  
Evie shook her head, oddly confident in her ability to throw down with the mistress of all evil, and went back to fishing out disguises.  
  
"Here, put this on," she picked something out from the rack and handed it to Mal.  
  
A hooded jacket with long, flared sleeves and a laced-up bodice, sweeping across the floor as Evie handed it over.  
  
"This isn't purple," Mal said very obviously, noting the inky black material. It was like a cloak of night.  
  
"No, because two characters wandering around Dragon Hall dressed in blue and purple are  _going_  to turn a few heads."  
  
"It's our signature!"  
  
"And we need to be in disguise!"  
  
Mal grumbled under her breath and unlaced the bodice to throw the cloak on over her clothes and tie it back up, yanking the hood on. Evie picked something similar for herself, a floor length enchantress' dress with bell sleeves, slipping it on over her head and tossing on a velvet hooded cape to hide her in the night. Yes, Mal had wanted to scold her for playing with fire, but honestly, she was proud of Evie for delivering on the Halloween mischief she'd promised to deliver earlier in the night. Mother would be livid when she woke up tomorrow to do her first of the month inventory and found out her merchandise had been stolen.  
  
They headed out of Bargain Castle and back out into the street, a handful of little kids with rattling cans of spray paint and faces painted like spooky skulls rushing past them with cackles. Evie eyed them sadly as they went, and Mal knew that look inside and out.  
  
"...E, they have an open invitation, but Ben will never force them. The rest of the kids here have to make the choice to come to Auradon on their own," she gently said.  
  
Evie sighed.  
  
"As if Auradon's really any better for them right now, what with a coven of witches looking to make them into midnight snacks," she murmured. "...Let's just get the spellbook. With these disguises we stand a chance of sneaking into the school, but we still have to get Dr. Facilier's key to the library  _and_  get past the giant spider."  
  
"The key should be in his office," Mal mused.  
  
"M, you know Dr. Facilier practically  _lives_  in that office sometimes. What if we run into him?"  
  
Mal wracked her brain for an answer as she and Evie started back in the direction of Dragon Hall.  
  
"If only I had my magic!" she said in frustration. "I could cause a distraction, or zap that spider down to squishing size, or..."  
  
Mal stopped short, both in her words and in her footsteps.  
  
"...M?" Evie said questioningly.  
  
Mal didn't answer her. All she did was reach past her cloak and into her jacket pocket, pulling out the remote to the magic barrier without a word. She didn't need a word. Evie was her very best friend, and Evie knew exactly how her mind worked.  
  
"...Are you insane??" Evie demanded. "You want to drop the barrier for that??"  
  
"It would only be for a minute, Evie! Just long enough for me to cast  _some_  sort of spell, no one will know! We'd have to drop it to get out of here anyway, what's the difference? I drop the barrier, I use my magic, and the barrier is back up before any villain realizes what's happened. Would you rather get chased around the school by a giant spider or see the spider burned to a crisp?"  
  
Evie shuddered.  
  
"Neither of those, actually..."  
  
"Seven months ago Jane blew a hole completely through the barrier and no one but our parents noticed. We don't have a lot to work with here, we've got to take what we can get. You have to trust me on this."  
  
Evie didn't even need to think it over anymore.  
  
"Mal, I'd trust you with my life," she said. "...Okay. Let's get back to Dragon Hall."  
  
They were disguised against the night in their cloaks and hoods of black, two expert villain kids who'd built their lives around sneaking and slipping by unseen. They made their way back to the relative safety of the brick wall overlooking the school, ducking down low and peering over the top to spy on the party.  
  
"Crazy for a cemetery to be so alive," Mal said.  
  
Evie smacked her arm. It was no time for jokes.  
  
"The coast is clear," she told Mal, pointing to the front doors.  
  
The Isle's villain kids kept their Halloween festivities centered around the graveyard, few lingered close to the school itself, and even fewer lingered for long.  
  
"Let's hurry," Mal said, urging Evie along with a gentle push of her shoulder.  
  
They left their cover and crept closer to the school, step by step.  
  
"Sisters, behold!!"  
  
And then Mal and Evie froze, very much like thieves caught in a searchlight.  
  
The witches stormed in with dramatic flourishes of their dresses and wretchedly gleeful smiles—and with Gil hot on their heels.  
  
"They're here..." Evie's whisper was choked.  
  
"...Go. Go!"   
  
A far less gentle push of Evie's shoulder was how Mal urged her along now, the two of them breaking into a run towards Dragon Hall. Somehow, the witches were faster.  
  
"Well hello!" Winifred said with a grin as she and her sisters cut right into the girls' path.  
  
"Hey Mal! Hey Evie!" Gil peeked over Sarah's shoulder and waved. "We were just talking about you guys!"  
  
"Were you now?" Mal scornfully narrowed her eyes at him. "Does Uma know you're running around talking to strangers?"  
  
"Come for my darling spellbook, have you?" Winifred guessed.  
  
"Thou art a brave one indeed," Mary laughed wickedly.  
  
Mal turned her ire on Winifred.  
  
"You three are new around here, I get that you don't know how things work in Auradon. So maybe it's different where you come from, but in  _this_  kingdom, evil doesn't win," she said.  
  
"The spellbook belongs to Winnie!" Sarah insisted. Gil nodded firmly behind her like he had a single clue what was going on.  
  
"...Oh yeah?" Mal said inquisitively. "...Race you."  
  
Mal and Evie were often regarded as two halves of a whole, and rightfully so, too. No sooner than the sly  _"Race you"_  slipped past Mal's lips did Evie take off, running on her best friend's wavelengths and already racing towards the school. Mal was right there at her side, not daring to look back.  
  
"Don't just stand there, you idiots!" Winifred snapped, immediately giving chase.  
  
Mal, personally, was more accustomed to running  _away_  from Dragon Hall. This was the first time she'd ever run  _towards_  it. In no time at all she and Evie had cleared the rusted wrought-iron fence and sped into the cemetery, dashing their way through the party as they made for the massive tomb of Dragon Hall. With three sharp hisses, the Sanderson sisters stopped just short of the fence like they'd rushed upon a cliff's edge.  
  
"'Tis hallowed ground!!" Sarah gasped, fearfully eyeing the gravestones.  
  
"We cannot cross!" Mary whimpered, clutching at Winifred's arm.  
  
Winifred yanked her arm free with a growl, and with a matching snarl, grabbed Gil by the collar and shoved him forward.  
  
"After them, Ghoul!" she commanded.  
  
"Um, it's—"  
  
 _"Now!!"_  
  
That lit a fire under Gil, and he took off at once.  
  
Very odd was it for Mal and Evie to be back inside Dragon Hall, the corridors as dim and creepy as ever. They skidded to a stop when they rounded their first corner, the screeching of their shoes echoing hauntingly.  
  
"...They aren't following us," Mal noted, pressed against the stone wall and listening carefully. "Why aren't they following us?"  
  
"Hey guys! Wait up!"  
  
"...Because they sent Gil. Move!" Evie answered with wide eyes, already starting into an urgent run again.  
  
Mal grabbed her by the hand and held her in place.  
  
"Evie, do you hear yourself? Since when is  _Gil_ a threat??"  
  
"Since he's the one with a sword."  
  
"...Oh. Right."  
  
"So hurry! We have to get to Dr. Facilier's office!"  
  
Evie led the way, even though back in their days on The Isle it was Mal who was painfully familiar with the route to the principal's office.  
  
"Of course they just  _had_  to run into Gil to do their bidding," Mal said in irritated disbelief as they darted down the corridors. "As clueless and dimwitted a lackey as they come."  
  
"Consider it a small mercy, they could've run into Uma," Evie dryly said, peeking her head around a corner before she started down it.  
  
"Maybe she's going as a decent human being for Halloween."  
  
The majority of Dragon Hall stretched deep underground, and the girls descended the winding stone staircases of the tomb to reach the lower levels and Dr. Facilier's office.  
  
"...It's really weird being back here. I didn't think I'd ever have to come back here. The school, The Isle..." Evie said mournfully.  
  
"I didn't think three witches would be summoned by a candle on Halloween and we'd be spending the night racing to save the children of Auradon. And what's the age cap on that, by the way? Are we considered children? Should we be worried about  _our_  souls being sucked out? Because I have to say, I don't think mine exactly makes the healthiest of snacks."  
  
It was easy to lose Gil within the gloomy corridors of Dragon Hall, the girls continued on their way without a single sign of him now.  
  
"...I promised you trouble on Halloween, didn't I?" Evie remembered with a little laugh.  
  
"You did, but  _I'm_  the one who got us into trouble, E. This whole candle mess is my fault."  
  
"But I'm here with you. It's you and me on another crazy adventure, this one just has less magic wands."  
  
Mal smiled.  
  
"It’s always you and me."  
  
"Well, I  _am_  your best friend. As if I'm going to sit at home knitting while there's mischief to get into."  
  
As if Mal would rather have anybody else at her side.  
  
The door to the headmaster's office was old, gnarled wood with weird symbols scrawled on it in pinks, purples, reds, fitted into an archway when the tomb was repurposed into a school. Dr. Facilier was always known for lingering at odd hours, leading many of the students to jokingly and not-so-jokingly assume he lived at school.  
  
"Do you think he's in there?" Evie asked, lowering her voice so close to the door.  
  
Mal couldn't even hazard a guess.  
  
"I'll go in. You keep watch," she said, pulling her hood tighter around her head like it could hide her completely.  
  
Dr. Facilier's office was a sight for sore eyes. All at once Mal's memories of sitting and scowling under a lecture from the headmaster came flooding back to her. The creepy masks hanging on the walls and staring without any eyes, the candles throwing strange and eerie light around the room, the skulls and potion bottles lining the desk and the shelves. But no sign of their old headmaster, so Mal began her search.  
  
She pulled open every drawer in the desk, yet found nothing but a handful of voodoo dolls bearing frightening resemblances to former classmates of hers. She grabbed a rickety stool and felt around the tops of the bookshelves, coming away with only fingertips coated with dust and cobwebs. Uncorking empty potion bottles and peering inside, shaking out books like a key might tumble from the pages, Mal tried it all. The door opened just a crack a little while later, and Evie was poking her head in.  
  
"How's it going?" she asked.  
  
"It's not," Mal grumbled. "If I were a key, where would I be?"  
  
There was a reason Evie was always the brains of several operations. It seemed like she puzzled over it for barely any time at all before the lightbulb went off above her head.  
  
"...Where no one would want to look," she said.  
  
She opened the door further and came into the office, heading right for the horrifying masks on the walls with their empty eye sockets and contorted expressions. They were all hanging on little hooks bolted to the wall, and when Evie took them down one by one to investigate what was behind them, she found a key ring hanging from one of the hooks as well.  
  
"...You're incredible," Mal said in awe, taking the key ring from Evie and dangling it from her finger.  
  
"I try."  
  
"Okay, the Athenaeum of Evil. Let's go," Mal didn't even bother making sure everything was left as it was when she walked in, keeping a tight hold on the key ring and ducking out the door with Evie behind her.  
  
They ran, the scuffle of their footsteps the only sounds in the dark. The school's forbidden library was, well, forbidden, and it showed as Mal and Evie drew closer and closer to it. Cracks in the stone floor, the already shoddy lighting fallen into complete disrepair...and spiderwebs dangling like streamers from the ceiling and walls.  
  
"...We're close," Mal grimly realized, slowing her run into a careful creep.  
  
Goody. Close meant giant spider.  
  
"M, the Athenaeum of Evil is going to be full of more than just some old junk shop. How are we going to find the witches' spellbook in  _this?"_  
  
"Bound in human skin, pages of spells, one eye on the cover, you can't miss it," Gil said behind them.  
  
They jumped at the sound of his voice, Mal standing herself protectively in front of Evie as Gil drew his sword.  
  
"Hey guys. Happy Halloween," he said with a terrible grin.  
  
"...Gil, put the sword down," Mal warned.  
  
"You don't know what you're doing," Evie said over Mal's shoulder.  
  
"Nah, I really don't," Gil admitted, scratching his head. "All I know is that those ladies yell a lot."  
  
"They're  _witches,_  Gil.  _Evil,"_  Evie went on. "They're after the souls of children, which could very well include you."  
  
"We haven't exactly figured out the age limit on that yet," Mal added unhelpfully.  
  
"Huh. Then that makes them villains, doesn't it?" Gil could at least comprehend that much. "...Well, this is the Isle of the Lost, Mal. Villains rule."  
  
Mal shook her head.  
  
"They aren't getting their hands on that spellbook," she insisted.  
  
"Oh yeah?" Gil scoffed. "What are  _you_  going to do about it?"  
  
"...Me? I won't do anything. But  _this_  will."  
  
She dropped to the floor and dragged Evie down with her just in time to avoid the enormous spider making a terrifying leap right for them. Drawn to the sound of their voices and away from the library, Mal had only just barely heard it sneaking up behind them on eight quiet legs, just barely felt the tingle down her spine of something drawing close. Evie screamed when she saw it, Gil did too, when it landed between them and clicked giant, slick pincers together. Mal clamped a hand over Evie's mouth to muffle her screams, to make Gil and  _his_  screams the sole focus of the spider's ire.  
  
It practically took up the whole width of the hallway, blocking their view of the pirate with its body of black and legs like broomsticks. Gil swung wildly with his blade, any semblance of swordsmanship flying right out the window in his terror. Mal fought to keep a hold of Evie, Evie whose every single nerve ending burned with the need to get up and bolt out of there, but Mal miraculously managed to keep her head. With frantic kicks she scooted them back, scrambling away from the spider that could take off their heads in one single bite.  
  
It lunged for Gil, who whacked blindly at it with his sword, afraid to look. Evie hated to watch, hated to see the legs flailing and body wriggling. She screamed until Mal inched them around a corner, fear and adrenaline pulsing through their veins.  
  
"Evie!! Shh!" Mal whispered harshly with a thrumming heartbeat.  
  
Evie could still hear it shrieking and scuffling as it fought with Gil.  
  
"...Janitor's closet," Mal said, pointing across the hall. "Come on!"  
  
She pulled Evie to her feet and rushed them inside, crashing into splintered brooms and buckets with a clatter as she yanked the door closed behind them.  
  
"I can't breathe," Evie said in her wide-eyed panic, the cramped quarters not doing her any favors.  
  
"Spiders can't open doors," Mal quickly assured her, trying to wedge an arm free in the tight space.  
  
"Are there spiders in here?? Are they on me??"  
  
Mal could hear and feel Evie freaking out inches across from her, trying to shake the creepy-crawly feeling off.  
  
"Evie, I can't see you, it's pitch black in here."  
  
"You couldn't have at least let me in on the plan to let the spider take a flying leap at us??"  
  
Mal blindly reached out in the dark to softly cup Evie's face in her hands.  
  
"E, I adore you, but you have  _got_  to calm down."   
  
Evie nodded frantically in agreement. Mal listened carefully at the door, waiting until she heard what distinctly sounded like Gil taking off running and the spider giving a fevered chase.  
  
"Quick!" Mal threw the door open and took Evie's hand, running for the library.  
  
When they finally reached the looming double doors Mal didn't fumble with the key in her rush, but kept her hand steady and fitted it easily into the lock. She and Evie were moving double-time, speeding into the library the second the doors were opened and locking the locks behind them in case the Athenaeum's eight-legged guardian came back.  
  
For a library of evil, the Athenaeum was much like any other library. Towering bookshelves reaching up and up, creepy echoes bouncing around the cavernous space, and someone who apparently cared far more for ambiance than basic fire safety keeping the place lit with countless waves of candles.  
  
"...What did Gil say?" Mal asked, taking a dusty candelabra from a pedestal beside her.  
  
"Bound in human skin, pages of spells, one eye on the cover," Evie dutifully answered.  
  
"...Don't suppose an Athenaeum of Evil has a card catalog, do you?" Mal sighed, overwhelmed by the sheer number of books and bookshelves.  
  
At least they knew what to look for now. Evie grabbed a candelabra for herself, and she and Mal took opposite sides of the library.  
  
"How do you think the spellbook ended up here?" Mal didn't need to raise her voice, she knew it would carry.  
  
Evie tested the sturdiness of a ladder before she climbed it to search the higher shelves.  
  
"I have no idea. I don't know how any of this is happening. Maleficent, Jafar, Cruella, Evil Queen—I've  _never_ heard of the Sanderson sisters before."  
  
"Dude said they were only an urban legend. Just, without the legend part, I guess," Mal muttered.  
  
"They aren't from Auradon. That, we know. They said they were in another strange new world. I'll tell you one thing, though, I don't like that Mary. She reminds me of my mother."  
  
Evie shuddered.  
  
"So what we're really getting at is we have no idea who they are or where they came from, but they've definitely played this game before," Mal flatly said. "Perfect."  
  
They didn't know how much time was passing as they sifted through tomes, dusted off spines. Meticulously was the only way they could do it, going book by book, shelf by shelf. Many of them were the old, leather-bound kind, and Evie chose to steadfastly ignore Gil's little "human skin" quip.  
  
"What do you think that sea urchin meant by 'one eye on the cover'?" Mal wondered aloud, going through her third bookcase. "Like part of the cover art or just randomly doodled onto a centuries-old book?"  
  
"...I think he meant one big human eye sitting squarely on the cover," Evie said with a gulp.  
  
That's definitely what he had meant. Mal whirled around, found Evie down from her ladder with the candelabra in one hand and a glassy gaze morbidly fixed on the book nestled into the crook of her arm.  
  
"You found it??" Mal hurried over across the library.  
  
She found it. Literally stitched together with pieces of browned leather that Mal too chose to ignore as being human skin, with the lid of a very obvious eye shut tight as if in sleep. Evie's creepy-crawly feeling was back in force.  
  
"Now  _that's_  a spellbook..." Mal said quietly.  
  
"...We've got it," Evie said in disbelief. "...We've got it, and now we have to get out of here."  
  
Evie urgently started forward, but Mal didn't follow.  
  
"Get out..." she repeated. "...Evie, the Sanderson sisters! They can't get out! They could pass  _through_  the magic barrier, sure, but without their powers they're stuck here now!"  
  
It was true.  
  
"And they said the magic of the black flame candle will only last until sunrise," Evie realized.  
  
"Come sunrise, they're toast. We just have to get out of here with the spellbook and it's over!"  
  
Evie nodded fervently, a little smile coming to her face.  
  
"Let's go," she eagerly said.  
  
They set their candelabras down on an ancient gothic table and hurried for the exit, skidding immediately to a stop when the doors shook and rattled violently with the weight of something heavy thrown against them and a terrible hiss sounding out in the hall.  
  
"...Maybe not that way," Mal said with wide eyes.  
  
So spiders couldn't open doors. But maybe if they were big enough they could break them down.  
  
"There  _is_  no other way!" Evie's arachnophobic panic was back.  
  
Mal turned around, hurriedly scanned the vast expanse of the forbidden library.  
  
"One other way. Up."   
  
Up to where small windows of dark stained glass reached the ground level, where Mal had already run to and propped one of the library ladders into place. Evie jumped when the doors rattled again, when the giant spider banged and bumped against it like a charging bull.  
  
"E!" Mal shouted to get her attention. "This way!"  
  
Evie turned on a dime and made for the ladder, beginning a careful one-handed climb with one arm wrapped around the spellbook. Just as carefully, Mal perched on a window ledge, boot kicking the glass out with a tinkling shatter. Evie reached the top and handed the book to Mal, who tossed it through the window and waited for Evie to crawl out into the cemetery before she crawled out herself. No one saw them climbing out from the tomb, no one even heard the glass breaking over the grating music. Mal scooped up the spellbook and only looked to make sure Evie was close beside her as they ran away from Dragon Hall.  
  
The phrase "running for your life" was a literal one on the Isle of the Lost, but after months in the safety of Auradon, Mal and Evie were out of practice. They reached the Vespa with aching legs and burning lungs, one nonstop race down the blocks. Mal tossed the spellbook back to Evie and hopped on, taking the priceless moment to catch her breath as she traded hood for helmet and started the bike.  
  
"Get us to the beach," Evie said, fastening her own helmet.  
  
To the edge of the magic barrier.  
  
Evie kept looking worriedly over her shoulder as the Vespa zipped down The Isle's streets, knowing it was impossible without magic but still expecting to see three wicked witches on broomsticks hot on their tails. The wheels kicked up sand when Mal turned her bike to a stop on the shore and dug around in her pocket for the remote.  
  
"Ready?" she asked Evie.  
  
Evie quickly nodded, still fixated with the view over her shoulder.  
  
So Mal pushed the button, seeing only the faintest of shimmers in the nighttime air like a mirage lifting off of hot pavement before she put the remote away.  
  
 _"Noble steed, proud and fair, you shall take me anywhere,"_ Mal spoke her spell.  
  
And again they were flying.  
  
Rising higher and higher into the air on invisible wings of magic, leaving the Isle of the Lost behind once more and sailing off into the glittering night sky with a spellbook in tow.

* * *

 

"This way Winnie, I know they went this way!"  
  
Mary followed her nose, leading herself and her sisters to the water's edge. The beach was barren. The scent of children was still in the air. It didn't take a genius to figure it out.  
  
"Confound it all, they have escaped!" Winifred snapped, hands curling into fists.  
  
"They're very clever," Sarah said matter-of-factly.  
  
"And now they have my book," Winifred's voice twisted into a growl. "They have my book, and we have no way off this accursed island without our magic."  
  
"...Trapped?" Mary squeaked.  
  
"Trapped," Winifred narrowed her eyes. "We must use our wits to escape this place and rescue my spellbook, and by our wits, I mean  _my_  wits."  
  
"Your wits Winnie, absolutely, thou art still smartest and wisest of us all," Mary nodded furiously.  
  
Sarah paid them no mind, preoccupied with dancing her troubles away in the sand and watching her footprints appear and disappear with the shuffle of her feet. Winifred could only tolerate it for mere seconds before she lashed out like a whip.  
  
"Will you stop that idiotic dancing?! I am trying to think!!"  
  
Sarah stopped with a crunch, her heel stepping on something. All three glanced down, drawn to a shine in the sand.  
  
"...Winnie, what's that?" Mary questioned, pointing down at Sarah's feet.  
  
"How should I know? Sister Sarah, make thyself useful!"  
  
Winifred snapped her fingers and sent Sarah scrambling to pick up the shiny thing at her feet.  
  
"...'Tis a rectangle!" Sarah said triumphantly.  
  
Winifred snatched it out of her hand, studying it harshly. She didn't know what it was. But, now that she had a better view, Mary did.  
  
"'Tis an  _enchanted_  rectangle!" she corrected. "Sisters, observe."  
  
She grabbed it for herself, a little silver remote, and pushed the one button on it. All at once, the air shimmered before their very eyes, and all at once, the Sanderson sisters felt the spark of magic returning to them. Slowly, Winifred's lips curved into a hideously wretched sneer.  
  
"Again, sisters...we fly."


	2. Chapter 2

In her haste, Mal had forgotten that they'd left Dizzy with explicit instructions to lock the door to the boys' room. So she went straight for the doorknob and threw the door open wide all while forgetting to question why it was unlocked, a skeleton on a string flying right at her face and Evie yelping behind her.  
  
"Jay!!" the first time, Mal had smacked the skeleton away. This time, she outright swung her fist at it. "I swear to  _all_  that's unholy!!"

"Mal! Evie!"  
  
It wasn't Dizzy who called out their names in surprise, but Carlos, jumping up from his bed at the sight of them in the doorway. Dizzy didn't need to say anything, she just ran right for Evie with a gasp and practically tackled her in a bear hug.  
  
"Dizzy..." Evie sighed in relief, glad to see her safe and sound with the boys.  
  
"What the heck is going on?!" Carlos demanded. "Dizzy's talking about witches, Dude says you went back to The Isle??"  
  
"Why are you two dressed like graverobbers?" Jay asked, standing by the windows and crossing his arms.  
  
Mal looked down at herself and then at Evie, still in their cloaks of black.  
  
"Well, because technically, we are," she realized.  
  
She put the Sanderson sisters' spellbook down on the circular study table to lace herself out of her stolen hooded jacket and toss it over the back of a chair. Jay didn't find himself nearly as fraught with concern as Dizzy and Carlos did, eyeing the spellbook with a grin.  
  
"Whoa, where did you get  _that?_  This'll look great down at the party!"  
  
He started across the room for it, stopped in his tracks by Mal slamming a hand down on the book.  
  
"It's not a party favor," she coldly warned him.  
  
"And Dizzy and Dude aren't telling tall tales," Evie said, not even making an attempt to pry the young girl loose from her. "There  _are_  witches, and we  _did_  go back to The Isle."  
  
"What??" Carlos squeaked.  
  
"Come on," Jay jeered, waving Evie's words away. "Three old hags coming to life down in the gym? The same gym where there's an awesome party in full swing right now that we're missing because we were waiting on you guys?"  
  
The gym. The Halloween party. Now just past 10:30, of course their party was in full swing. Evie went on to follow Mal's lead when Dizzy finally let go, shrugging out of her cape and yanking the dress up and over her head with a huff.  
  
"We're not kidding!" she insisted again, balling up her Isle disguise and chucking it on the chair with Mal's. "Dude, didn't you tell them?"  
  
Sitting attentively on his pillow, Dude's ears perked up at the sound of his name.  
  
"Tell them what?" he wondered.  
  
"About the Sanderson sisters!" Mal and Evie said together in exasperation.  
  
"I tried to explain, but they wouldn't listen," Dizzy said helplessly. "Jay thought it was a joke, and Carlos was only worried about you guys going back to The Isle."  
  
"How could you do that?" Carlos fretfully asked.  
  
"Because we had to get this!" Mal yelled and again brought an irritated hand down on the spellbook.  
  
She realized her anxiousness was getting the best of her, that a stressful evening was fraying her nerves. She allowed herself a deep breath, trying to calm herself and cool her head.  
  
"...Dude, tell us the story again. The whole story. We know there's more to it. The Sanderson sisters may be an Auradon legend but they are  _so_  not from Auradon."  
  
Jay ambled over to his bed and kicked back on it with a mocking smile.  
  
"This ought to be good," he chuckled.  
  
Carlos saw everyone's eyes on his poor little dog, and returned to his own bed to crawl up next to his furry friend and give him a comforting scratch. The girls were tired from The Isle, dropping heavily into the chairs at the desk and Evie letting Dizzy sit on her lap.  
  
"Come on Dude," Carlos gently said. "Speak."  
  
"...But it's just a bunch of hocus pocus," the dog said pitifully.  
  
"Evie and I didn't risk our sanity for hocus pocus," Mal snapped.  
  
"...Fine," Dude resigned himself with a sigh and looked up at Carlos. "All I did was tell them about the Sanderson sisters. Kids here in Auradon always tell the story around Halloween. Mary, Sarah, and Winifred Sanderson, three old witches who lived forever ago in a cottage buried in the woods. They brewed a potion to turn themselves young and beautiful again by draining the soul of a child, and then planned to stay young forever by draining the souls of  _all_  the children in their town."  
  
The boys were listening, but from their expressions alone it was impossible to tell if they were believing.  
  
"The townspeople found out, had them hanged. But not before the witches promised that a curse on a black flame candle would bring them back to life if a virgin lit it on Halloween with a full moon in the sky."  
  
"The candle ended up at Sally's," Mal explained to the boys. "And now it's sitting in our school gym with the black flame that is  _seriously_  creepy looking."  
  
"But Mal wasn't the first one to light the candle, was she?" Evie asked Dude, already knowing the answer.  
  
"I mean, the story says the candle was lit three hundred years after the witches were hanged, and three kids had to save the town and keep the Sanderson sisters from finishing what they started."  
  
"How did they stop them?" Mal urgently asked.  
  
"Well for one thing they had help from a talking black cat, supposed to be some kid the witches cursed with immortality way back when. A talking cat, can you believe that?" Dude scoffed. "But they fought against the witches until the sun came up, when the candle's magic ran out and the sisters turned into dust."  
  
"That's what they said," Mal turned to Evie with a building smile. "The candle only brought them back for this one Halloween night, and when the sun rises in the morning, they're history."  
  
"They'll be trapped on The Isle until sunrise," Evie added with a smile of her own. "With the sisters there and the spellbook here, we've already won."  
  
"We have?" Dizzy asked excitedly.  
  
Jay narrowed his eyes suspiciously.  
  
"Hey, I love a great prank as much as the next guy, but—"  
  
"It's not a prank," Mal's own eyes were deadly serious as she glared across the room at him. "Somehow, the black flame candle wound up in Sally's shop. We picked it up there yesterday, I lit it tonight when we were setting up for the party, and the Sanderson sisters returned. They take the lives of  _children_  to keep themselves young, they were after Dizzy!"  
  
Dizzy frowned and pouted at the memory.  
  
"But they needed a potion to do it, a potion whose recipe was in the witches' spellbook," Evie said. "We figured if an evil spellbook was going to be anywhere in the kingdom, it was going to be on the Isle of the Lost."  
  
Carlos didn't believe it. The witches, he could wrap his head around. But The Isle?  
  
"So you went back just like that?" he said incredulously, keeping a nervous hold on Dude. "Do you realize how crazy that was, how dangerous??"  
  
"These are villains we don't know a single thing about!" Evie tensely told him. "We didn't know if they'd be powerful enough with their spellbook to break through the magic barrier, or if the barrier would even hold them in the first place! They aren't from Auradon, Carlos, we just didn't know! All we knew was that we had to keep the spellbook from falling into their hands—"  
  
"That we had to protect Dizzy," Mal firmly added.  
  
"That we had to protect all the children of Auradon," Evie finished. "You guys, we've lived this, we've  _all_  lived this. Villains are not a joke. Evil doesn't play games. If three crazy witches say they're going to suck the lives out of innocent children, we don't have time to just sit around questioning it."  
  
"You two were really brave," Dizzy's adoring eyes gazed back and forth at Mal and Evie.  
  
Mal smiled at her.  
  
"It was nothing, Diz. But if you think we're so brave then maybe you could come over here and give  _me_  a hug."  
  
Dizzy giggled and hopped down from Evie's lap to do exactly that.  
  
"So...you just went off on some crazy Halloween adventure without us?" Jay tried to clarify.  
  
"You thought that throwing toilet paper all over the kingdom was a more pressing issue," Mal scowled at him over the top of Dizzy's head.   
  
A crazy Halloween adventure indeed. Jay and Carlos out pranking while Mal and Evie were dealing with witches. Of course the girls would find a way to outdo them.  
  
"...Then these witches are really over and done with?" Carlos wondered.  
  
"They're trapped under the magic barrier. They could get in, but they can't get out," Mal assured him.  
  
"So how did  _you_  two get out?"  
  
"The same way we all got out when the royal limousine came to bring us to Auradon," Mal reached into her jacket pocket.  
  
And utterly froze.  
  
"...Mal?" standing beside her with an arm draped around her shoulders, Dizzy curiously looked down at her.  
  
"M, what are you doing?" Evie questioned as she watched Mal frantically digging around in all of her pockets.  
  
It was never a good omen when Mal turned paler than she usually was.  
  
"...Looking for the remote," she quietly answered.  
  
Slowly, Evie rose to her feet.  
  
 _"...Looking_  for the remote?" she repeated ominously. "As in, you don't  _have_  the remote?"  
  
"What remote?" Jay raised an eyebrow.  
  
"The, um...the remote that opens The Isle's magic barrier," Mal laughed sheepishly with everyone staring straight at her.  
  
Jay wasn't sure he was hearing right.  
  
"You  _lost_  the remote that opens The Isle's magic barrier?"  
  
"It can't be lost," Mal denied, still coming up empty-handed. "I had it down on the beach, I used it to open the barrier and then put it back into my pocket—"  
  
"So it's somewhere between here and The Isle??" Evie sternly snapped.  
  
"I put it in my pocket, E!" Mal argued, jumping to her feet.  
  
"And then we took off in a flying Vespa! Do you have any idea how easily it could've fallen out? Mal, if it's still back on the island and those witches find it—!"  
  
"Evie, come on," Mal rolled her eyes. "What are the odds of—"  
  
"What were the odds of  _any_  of this happening, Mal?? And still it happened anyway!"  
  
Now Carlos was on his feet, hands warily in the air as if in surrender.  
  
"Whoa, hey, now is not the time for fighting," he cautiously said, eyeing both of the girls.  
  
Dizzy didn't know what to think. Mal and Evie, fighting? Mal and Evie didn't fight, it simply wasn't done. Evie's fire quelled just barely at Carlos' insistence.  
  
"M, how could you not be more careful?" Evie wanted to know, strain clear in her voice.  
  
"Why are you just assuming this is a crisis?" Mal had a question of her own. "How do you know I didn't drop it out in the hallway, huh? What makes you think it _has_  to be back on The Isle, and why in the world would you think that one, the Sanderson sisters would miraculously stumble upon it, and two, know how to use it?"  
  
Evie shook her head back and forth.  
  
"We can't take the risk," she said in stark realization. "Remote or no remote, we can't take the risk that the three of them find a way off The Isle, or worse, find a way off The Isle and take all the other villains with them."  
  
"...That would be bad," Dizzy squeaked.  
  
Jay sighed heavily and sat up on his bed, trying his hand at being the voice of reason.  
  
"Look, if three old hags need this spellbook of theirs so darn much, maybe they're just powerless without it."  
  
"They're not," Mal and Evie again said together.  
  
"...We have to go to Fairy Godmother," Evie nodded to herself, already decided.  
  
"She'll be down at the party," Jay noted.  
  
"She'll never believe us," Mal pointed out.  
  
"...We'll take the spellbook," Evie firmly said. "That, she'll believe."  
  
Her urgency spurred everyone else along, Jay clambering off his bed, Carlos quickly calling out a  _"Let's go, Dude"_  and the dog making a leap onto the carpet with his little bat wings bouncing. Dizzy followed the boys out into the hall as Evie grabbed the spellbook off the table.  
  
"...I'm sorry," Mal murmured before her best friend turned to leave.  
  
 _"...I'm_  sorry," Evie uttered softly. "I didn't mean to get upset with you so easily, it's just...it's like Maleficent all over again. Another fire-breathing dragon here to hurt me, my friends, the people I care about..."  
  
"Your friends and the people you care about aren't in the same category?" Mal chuckled.  
  
Evie didn't say anything to that.  
  
"...I know it seems bad," Mal wore a gentle smile. "But last time we faced that dragon together, and this time, we'll do the same. I definitely don't like us arguing, Evie."  
  
"I don't either," Evie admitted.  
  
Dizzy poked her head back into the room.  
  
"I'm not a fan of it myself, but can we hurry up and go?" she tensely urged.  
  
They took her hint and got a move on, closing the door to the dorm behind them as they left. The halls were dead and decidedly eerie with everyone down in the gym, with only the sounds of the VKs' footfalls trailing down the carpet.  
  
"You know, they're gonna start wondering why trouble always seems to gravitate towards us," Jay said.  
  
"I'm already wondering that myself," Mal told him.  
  
"How did it go on The Isle?" Dizzy questioned as they hurried along.  
  
Mal already needed to repress an  _"Ugh"_  at the memory.  
  
"We had to sneak into the Athenaeum of Evil at Dragon Hall," she said. "Which, in retrospect, we literally only did on a hunch, so it's a good thing Evie's as smart as she is."  
  
"No one saw you?" Carlos asked.  
  
"Would we be here in one piece if anyone saw us?" Mal asked back.  
  
Evie tugged lightly on Mal's sleeve in some kind of reminder.  
  
"M, after all..."  
  
The reminder served its purpose.  
  
"...Well, Gil was there," Mal admitted with a sigh. "Strayed too far from Uma's beady little eyes and wound up with the witches, but the last we saw of him he was getting the business end of the forbidden library's giant spider."  
  
"Oh man..." Carlos shivered like a hundred little legs were crawling all over him.  
  
"Do we have some kind of plan for dealing with these witches that  _doesn't_  involve stalling until sunrise?" Jay asked over his shoulder, starting down the main staircase.   
  
He was met with silence.  
  
"...They aren't villains from Auradon's history. There's no telling  _how_  powerful they are," Evie said rather defeatedly.  
  
Dizzy gasped, an excited little smile crinkling her eyes behind her glasses.  
  
"No, but the Sanderson sisters aren't the only ones with a spellbook," she said, beaming.  
  
The crew stopped. All eyes went to Mal.  
  
"...Me??" Mal said incredulously.  
  
"...You and your magic stood your own against Maleficent, after all," Carlos reminded her.  
  
"And you kept the sisters back long enough for us to escape the gym!" Dizzy added.  
  
Mal couldn't quite explain why she was feeling less like a champion and more like bait.  
  
"Whoa, excuse me, Mal is  _not_  our secret weapon here," Evie quickly interjected.  
  
Her speaking Mal's exact thoughts somehow seemed like cause for offense.  
  
"What, you think I can't be?" Mal turned to her and threateningly crossed her arms.  
  
"You think I  _want_  you to be?" Evie countered. "Three against one, Mal? No, it's not happening."  
  
Mal was alight with a smug grin.  
  
"Huh. If I didn't know any better I'd say you were worried about me," she chided.  
  
Evie stuck her tongue out at her and then took the lead from Jay, continuing on towards the school gym.  
  
Their party was indeed in full swing, they could hear Carlos' Halloween playlist blaring at least two halls away, songs about things hiding underneath beds, teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red. The gym doors were propped open and it seemed like all of Auradon Prep was in attendance, the room filled to the brim with classmates dancing, laughing, chatting by the punchbowl and the snack tables.  
  
"The lights are back on..." Dizzy said curiously, remembering how the Sanderson sisters' arrival seemed to fizzle them out.  
  
Carlos stooped over to pick up Dude, wary of him getting stepped on in the crowd.  
  
"Look for Ben, or Fairy Godmother, or  _someone,"_  Evie urged, eyes already searching as she clutched the spellbook tight.  
  
"Do we tell them it's all Mal's fault?" Jay asked ever-so-innocently.  
  
Neither girl even wasted time or energy on a glare.  
  
They were all stopped before they even had a chance to fan out, stopped by Jane cutting her way through the crowd.  
  
"There you guys are! This party is  _great._  These decorations? Unbelievable! Usually it's just streamers, balloons, and posters, but turning the gym into a haunted mansion?  _So_  cool!"  
  
"Thank you Jane, really, but have you seen Fairy Godmother around anywhere?" Evie asked.  
  
"Mom? She's around here somewhere, I guess," Jane took a quick look around, but it was hard to pick out one person in the sea of bobbing heads around them.  
  
"What about Ben? Have you seen Ben?" Mal urgently questioned.  
  
"Well he  _was_  at the punchbowl with Audrey, but—"  
  
That was all Evie needed to hear, leading her fellow VKs on the move again without even a quick "bye" to Jane.  
  
"Ben!" she called out, trying to make herself heard above the music.  
  
"Ben!!" Mal shouted.  
  
Dude barked, before remembering he could talk and calling out the king's name as well. Through the din and the dancing, he was simply nowhere to be found.  
  
"I'll call him," Carlos offered.  
  
"What do you  _think_  we're doing?" Mal sharply retorted.  
  
And then turned around to find Carlos with Dude tucked under an arm and his phone in hand.  
  
"...Oh. Good idea," Mal muttered petulantly.  
  
With Carlos' phone pressed to his ear they waited, Mal taking her turn at carrying the heavy spellbook when she saw Evie adjusting her hold on it over and over again with a vague sort of discomfort on her face.  
  
"Ben? Hey! Where are you? ...Okay, don't move, we're headed towards you," Carlos hung up, slipped his phone back into his pocket, and pointed across the gym. "Grandfather clock with the skeleton inside, come on."  
  
Towards the very back of the room, where one of their greater Halloween finds of a prop grandfather clock with a dusty and yellowed skeleton hidden behind the door stood near the wall. Ben was indeed there, not with Audrey, but talking to some student council kids with a glass of blood-red punch in his hand.  
  
"Hi, you guys," Ben turned to greet them with a smile. "What's—?"  
  
No time for pleasantries. Jay hooked his arm around Ben's without breaking his stride and dragged him off, nearly spilling punch all over the king's nice blue suit.  
  
"Ben, hi. We've got a problem," Evie spoke a little breathlessly.  
  
"You know, just a regular Sunday night for us," Carlos nervously chuckled.  
  
Silence befell all of them just then. Ben waited, ears at the ready, but no one knew how to even begin to explain.  
  
"So, uh..." Jay made an attempt.  
  
"Well, you see..." Dizzy made an equally pathetic attempt.  
  
Still, Ben waited.  
  
"They lit a magic candle and brought some evil witches back to life," Dude yipped indifferently.  
  
"...Yeah, that," Mal somberly nodded.  
  
"Ben, you've heard of the Sanderson sisters?" Evie asked.  
  
Ben's confusion melted away with a small laugh.  
  
"Of course. Their story is a Halloween staple here in Auradon," he said with an easy smile. "The witches, the potion, the candle..."  
  
"The spellbook," Mal added, lifting it up for him to see. "Ben, it isn't a story. The Sanderson sisters are real, and they’re here in the kingdom."  
  
Ben didn't appear convinced, his entertained smile never wavering.  
  
"Ben!" If Evie were a less dignified person, she would've stomped her foot in irritation. "We're serious! Look, come over here, we have the black flame candle!"  
  
Again the poor boy was yanked like a puppet on a string, this time with Evie taking his arm and jostling his punch as she dragged him through the crowd.  
  
It was right where they'd left it, flickering in its holder with the spooky black flame. Ben stooped over to peer in close at it with wide, impressed eyes.  
  
 _"Wow,"_  he breathed. "How did you guys do that?? It must be magic, right?"  
  
Mal wondered how much trouble she'd get into for throttling the king of Auradon.  
  
 _"Yes,_  it's magic, but it's not  _our_ magic!" she said in exasperation. "This is bad magic, don't you get it? Witchcraft!"  
  
Ben chuckled.   
  
"You're good, Mal. Leave it to you and the villain kids to come up with this much Halloween fun."  
  
"He doesn't believe us..." Dizzy anxiously whispered to Evie.  
  
"Of course not, because that would make this all too easy," Evie sighed.  
  
"Look man, just hear them out. They seem pretty sure about this," Jay said.  
  
Ben's smile started to falter.  
  
"...Pretty sure about what? It's just a story people like to tell to get into the Halloween spirit. Those witches aren't real."  
  
"Then where did the story come from?" Evie cleverly questioned. "Maybe in other places villains are just fairytales, but for us, our villains are our history."  
  
"Well that's just it, there  _is_  no history of them," Ben tried to explain. "We know Maleficent, we know Jafar, we know the Evil Queen and Cruella, but there were never any Sanderson sisters."  
  
"No, there was only a spell that brought every dead villain back to life to be imprisoned on The Isle because death was just too easy a punishment," Mal coldly said.  
  
Stark silence. Mal's narrowed eyes studied the stupefied faces around her, even those of her friends, before she went on with one final note.  
  
"So maybe twenty years ago Fairy Godmother wasn't as specific with her enchantment as she wanted to be. Maybe she brought more than just Auradon's villains back from the dead."  
  
The thought hadn't occurred to Evie at all, but oh, how the well-polished gears in her head were turning now.  
  
"The witches were hanged centuries ago in whatever land they’re really from. Centuries later, the candle resurrects them, and they die again with the sunrise when the candle burns down...their existence is already tied to the black flame candle! Fairy Godmother resurrecting villains twenty years ago wouldn't bring the sisters back to life in Auradon, but the  _means_  to bring the sisters back to life," she thought aloud.  
  
"I guess that explains how the candle ended up in here and found its way to Sally's magic shop," Carlos said.  
  
"...Maybe you guys have just had a really long day," Ben cautiously suggested, eyeing the VKs like one of them might snap at any moment. "You know, you've spent all this time working on the party, had a lot of late nights—"  
  
"Forget it," Mal huffed in disgust, shouldering past Ben.  
  
Back into the sea of students they went, leaving Ben dumbfounded far behind them.  
  
"He thinks we're crazy," Mal grumbled.  
  
"Can you blame him? Even I'm starting to think we're not all there ourselves," Evie sighed bitterly.  
  
"Well, this  _is_  crazy. Tell me Maleficent is wreaking havoc, sure, but tell me three creepy witches from some old Auradon bedtime story are running loose?" Carlos said in exasperation. "But, I mean...you two wouldn't just go back to The Isle without a good reason, not even for the greatest Halloween prank of all time."  
  
"This  _would_  make the greatest Halloween prank of all time," Jay agreed. "...Carlos is right, though. If you say something's up, then something's up. I don't need to see witches to know they're out there."  
  
"Then what does everyone else want us to do?? Parade the Sanderson sisters up and down the math hall??" Mal snapped; not at the boys, just in a general frustration.  
  
The music was loud, there was a lot of dancing, and it made for the perfect party. The party Dizzy had been looking forward to all this time, and the party that she really could've cared less about now. She was keeping an eye out for Fairy Godmother.  
  
But found something else entirely.  
  
"...Mal! Evie!!" she yelled.  
  
The pair turned around right away.  
  
"Oh no..." Evie whispered, going white.  
  
It was deja vu all over again as they watched Mary, Sarah, and Winifred slinking into the gym and weaving their way through everyone, turning heads and garnering stares.  
  
"Winnie, the children are here," Mary said, sniffing.  
  
"The children are  _everywhere,_  you fool," Winifred growled, gesturing to the room around them. "And my spellbook is here too. Find it!"  
  
Mal saw the sisters splitting up, diving into the crowd.  
  
"Scatter!" she urgently said.  
  
Jay and Carlos craned their necks, trying to catch a curious glimpse of the witches across the gym.  
  
"Boys!!" Evie shouted over her shoulder.  
  
Like a werewolf coming alive with the rising of the moon, it seemed like Mal's Isle side only grew bolder and bolder as the night went on, pushing and shoving kids right out of her way as she and the others ran to distance themselves from the sisters.  
  
"They're after the spellbook!" she said anxiously, keeping it tucked tight under her arm.  
  
"They'll take Dizzy!" Evie said back.  
  
Jay spotted the witches just then, wandering around with piercing eyes searching intently.  
  
"Oh man..."  
  
Winifred was standing a menacing watch near the doors, Mary literally sniffed around the punchbowl, and Sarah got distracted playing with a strand of cobwebs.  
  
"Hey! I see Fairy Godmother!" Dude barked from Carlos' arms.  
  
He'd found her with Ben back over by the grandfather clock, the two of them appearing to be talking pleasantly over the music.  
  
"...Good job, buddy," Carlos quickly said, giving the dog a scratch before they all hurried off.  
  
The headmistress saw them make their approach, wearing her beaming smile the whole time.  
  
"Children! This party is  _wonderful,_  you've all outdone yourselves!" she said warmly.  
  
Mal just felt perpetually winded, the way her night was going. Evie knew to take over for a minute while Mal caught her breath from their sprinting around the gym.  
  
"Fairy Godmother, we need your help. We need your  _magic,"_  she said.  
  
"...Oh?" the headmistress raised an eyebrow.  
  
"It's Halloween and three psycho witches are on the loose," Jay bluntly told her.  
  
Ben was still wholly under the impression that it was all some grand VK joke, as evidence by the way he stood and eagerly watched for Fairy Godmother's reaction.  
  
"The Sanderson sisters, the ones from the urban legend, only they aren't just legend anymore," Mal explained, getting her wind back.  
  
She shoved the spellbook into Fairy Godmother's hands, feeling a small sense of relief at being free of it, no matter how briefly.  
  
"My word," the headmistress certainly wasn't expecting to see such a sight as a massive book with one great sleeping eye on it.  
  
Relief at being free of it, for Mal could feel the dark energy that radiated from its pages in waves. Fairy Godmother had to have been able to feel it too. Mal was counting on it.   
  
The magic was everywhere tonight, charging all of Mal's senses. Charging the air as a bolt of lightning crackled over their heads and zapped the sound system, shorting out the speakers and killing the music.  
  
"'Fraid that belongs to me, you little thieves!" Winifred yelled from the center of the room.  
  
If the sisters had only claimed some of the party's attention with their mysterious arrival and strange appearance, then they were certainly claiming all of the attention now. The crowd parted around them, Auradon kids wearing everything from wide eyes to furrowed brows to gaping mouths.  
  
"There!" Mal pointed an accusing finger at them, looking frantically back and forth from Fairy Godmother, to Ben, to the Sanderson sisters. "You see? They're real!"  
  
"And they're here..." Carlos said quietly, his face blank and incredulous after finally seeing for himself.  
  
"The story, Fairy Godmother! About brewing an evil potion and stealing the lives of children for themselves??" Evie reminded her. "That's what they're going to do!"  
  
Sarah smiled and waved with everyone's eyes on her and her sisters.  
  
"Winnie, look. They've got  _boys_  this time," she said luridly, smile turning menacing.  
  
Dude growled, low in his throat. Mary barked at him in retort. Step by step the trio drew closer to the VKs, Winifred never taking her eyes off the spellbook. The VKs proved capable of moving as one as well, Mal, Evie, Jay, and Carlos gathering protectively in front of Dizzy.  
  
"...Back for Round Two?" Mal's face settled into a glare as she raised a hand, willing her powers to build.  
  
"What a confident little purple witch," Winifred snickered, tapping a finger to her chin.  
  
Evie glanced over her shoulder, eyes begging.  
  
 _"Please,_  Fairy Godmother..."  
  
The headmistress, like the rest of Auradon Prep gathered in the gym, took her time getting a grip on the events unfolding around her. And then, all she could do was laugh.  
  
"Oh you kids, this is something else!" she said, thoroughly impressed.  
  
Still believing Mal and her friends were setting up and pulling off the greatest Halloween gag she'd ever seen. At her words, her excitement, the partygoers erupted into claps and cheers for the villain kids, congratulations on a job well done. Evie couldn't believe it. Mal couldn't believe it. Jay, Carlos, Dizzy, all of them at a complete and utter loss.  
  
Winifred took a bow, taking the cheers for her own and relishing in them while Mary nodded at the crowd with a humble  _"Thank you, thank you"._  
  
"...Hello, Auradon," a villainous smile twisted the corner of the eldest sister's lips. "My name's Winifred. What's yours?"  
  
One point of her finger and a wickedly long nail was all it took for the witch to zap the speakers back to life, filling the gym with the eerie and tinkling first chords of a song that didn't even exist on Carlos' playlist.  
  
 _"I put a spell on you...and now, you're mine,"_  she slowly sang.  
  
"Oh, I  _love_  this part!!" Sarah gushed, lighting up like an Auradon kid on Christmas.  
  
 _"You can't stop the things I do...I ain't lyin'."_  
  
There was another tickling against Mal's skin for the countless time that night, dark and dangerous, like static in the air as a lightning storm brewed.  
  
 _"It's been twenty-five years, right down to the day!"_  
  
Their classmates were riveted, Mal could see it in their faces, the way they were utterly drawn to Winifred's presence while her sisters looked on in fiendish delight.  
  
 _"Now the witch is back! ...And again, there's hell to pay."_  
  
"...You guys, we have to go," Mal said, backing away with wide eyes.  
  
An obvious statement, but Evie didn't like that look on her best friend's face.  
  
"M? What is it?"  
  
 _"I put a spell on you..."_  
  
"Winifred's singing! She's  _actually_  casting a spell!" Mal said in a panic.  
  
Dizzy gasped sharply, clasping her hands over her ears. Evie and the boys saw it just then, how the expressions of their peers and teachers around them were turning suspiciously glassy and glazed over.  
  
 _"And now, you're..."_  
  
"Uh oh..." Carlos gulped.  
  
 _"MINE!!!”_  
  
The mystic music picked up over the speakers, everyone but the VKs starting to dance to the fast-paced beat. Even Fairy Godmother bopped along with a smile on her face, completely unaware of Mal snatching the spellbook back and breaking into a run.  
  
"After them, sisters! Get my spellbook! At once!" Winifred shoved Sarah and Mary in the VKs' direction.  
  
"Move it!" Mal urged her friends, looking over her shoulder and seeing the two sisters giving chase.  
  
 _"I put a spell on you, and now you're gone,"_  Winifred stood in the middle of the room and sang.   
  
It was one madcap line racing through the gym—Mal with the spellbook, Evie, Dizzy, Carlos with Dude, Jay, and the two Sandersons.  
  
 _"My whammy fell on you, and it was strong.”_  
  
"Didn't anyone ever teach you not to play with your food??" Dizzy shouted at the witches.  
  
 _"Your wretched little lives have all been cursed, 'cause of all the witches working, I'm the worst!"_  
  
Auradon Prep was entranced, doing nothing but dancing and smiling as the VKs ran for their lives with evil witches in hot pursuit.  
 _  
“I put a spell on you, and now you're mine!"_  
  
"Dude, don't listen!" Carlos tried to cover his little doggy ears.  
  
Sarah, suddenly and somehow, wound up in front of them; Mal coming to a screeching halt and the others crashing right into her. Sarah in front, and Mary behind. They were trapped, trapped between the witches and their devious cackling.  
  
 _"If you don't believe you'd better get superstitious, ask my sisters!"_  
  
Automatically and obediently, Sarah and Mary turned their attention to Winifred just long enough to chorus an agreement.  
  
 _"She's vicious!"_  they sang in unison.  
  
Mal knew how to take advantage of a distraction, even a second's distraction.  
  
"Split up!" she called out while the witches had their heads turned.  
  
Mal one way, Evie and Dizzy another way, Carlos another way, and Jay another way still. In four completely different directions they took off into the crowd.  
  
 _"I put a spell on you..."_  
  
The look Sarah and Mary exchanged when they realized the kids had gotten away was priceless, as was the second look they exchanged when they both silently agreed that they needed to catch them before Winifred found out.  
  
 _"A wicked spell..."  
_  
No one did a single thing as Mal shoved them aside and bowled her way through them, everyone completely under Winifred's thrall.   
  
 _"I put a spell on you!"_  
  
None of the VKs could let their focus waiver and search for one another as they zigzagged their way to the doors, all of them trusting each other to handle themselves and make it out in one piece. Mary had lost sight of them, Sarah did too, bouncing on her feet to catch a glimpse of which way they'd gone.  
  
 _"Ahsay-into-pie-uppa-maybe-uppen-die!!"_  Winifred chanted.  
  
 _"Ahsay-into-pie-uppa-maybe-uppen-die!"  
_  
Mal was horrified to hear the room chanting back.  
  
"Evie, that doesn't sound good!" Dizzy fretted.  
  
"Just run!" Evie said.  
  
Finally, escape was in sight for all of them as they reached the doors one by one. Mal got there first, but ever the leader, waited for the others so she could rush them out into the hall with an urgent wave of her hand.  
  
 _"In-kama-koray-ahma!"_  Winifred sang her magic.  
  
 _"In-kama-koray-ahma!"_  the partygoers brightly repeated.  
  
"Go go go! Head outside!" Mal ordered her friends.  
  
Carlos, Evie, Dizzy, Jay; they all zipped past her in various blurs.  
  
 _"Hey!”_

_“Hey!!”_

_“Hi!”_

_“Hi!!”  
_

_“Say..."_

_“Say!”  
_  
One final glance out across the gym and the musical madness that had ensued, and then Mal was gone.  
  
 _"Bye-byyyyyyyye! Bye bye!!"_

* * *

 

Autumn grass and leaves crunched under their shoes and the moon lit their way across the lawn. The villain kids only stopped when they could take cover behind the thick trunk of a tree planted a fair distance away from the building.  
  
"Okay, so, they definitely spelled the whole school," Carlos said, gasping for breath and setting Dude down in the grass.  
  
"Fairy Godmother included!" Mal made a noise like a furious growl and kicked a frustrated foot at the tree.  
  
"How did they find us??" Jay wondered.  
  
"Mary, the one in red," Evie scornfully narrowed her eyes at the school building. "She can smell children, track us like a twisted bloodhound."  
  
"She kind of reminds me of your mom," Jay noted.  
  
"I know, it's horrible."  
  
"Smelling people all the time isn't what it's cracked up to be," Dude mentioned.  
  
Carlos went pale under the moonlight.  
  
"If they can track us, then they'll be coming for us at any minute!" he realized. "What do we do??"  
  
"Those witches are centuries old, and I've had my spellbook for seven months,” Mal said dismally.  
  
"And with Fairy Godmother in there getting her party on, we're all out of magic," Jay groaned and dropped down onto the ground.  
  
Dizzy eyed the spellbook tucked under Mal's arm.  
  
"...What if we used some of their own magic against them?" she suggested.  
  
Mal followed her gaze, and immediately shook her head.  
  
"No way, kid. Not happening," she quickly denied.  
  
"But—!"  
  
"Listen to her, Dizzy," Evie warned. "Nothing good can come from that book."  
  
"Yeah Diz, I mean, the thing's got a big eye on it," Carlos told her.  
  
"But we have to do  _something!_  The Sanderson sisters getting the spellbook is only the least of our problems!"  
  
Dizzy was right, and they all knew it, but that didn't mean any of them had an answer. For too long a moment they all just stared blankly at each other, all but twiddling their thumbs.  
  
And boy, were the VKs ever grateful that Evie was on  _their_  side.  
  
"...We don't have to outspell them, we just need to outsmart them," she said in realization.  
  
Mal liked the spark gleaming to life in her best friend's eyes.  
  
"And how do we do that?" she questioned.  
  
"...By luring them into a trap," Evie said quietly. "My car is around back. Let's go!"  
  
They moved like ghosts in the night, but also moved quickly, knowing the sisters would soon be sniffing them out. Evie's blue car was there in the parking lot behind the school, with her keys still nestled in her pocket from trick-or-treating earlier in the night. Evie climbed behind the wheel, Mal sat at her side, and Dizzy and the boys all piled in the back just as the car roared to life.  
  
"Dizzy, buckle your seatbelt!" with her hands tight around the wheel, Evie's heel hit the gas, and with a grating screech of the tires they sped off into the night.

* * *

 

"...Hey Mal, look who it is," Carlos chuckled.  
  
Mal was the last one up the stone steps, and the last one to peer in through the glass of the door.  
  
"...You have  _got_ to be kidding me," she whispered sharply.  
  
"What? Who is it?" Dizzy asked.  
  
Evie tried not to smile, for really, it wasn't funny, but after the night she'd been having she honestly needed  _something_  to laugh at. She turned her head away so as not to set a bad example for Dizzy, leaving Jay to explain to her.  
  
"The exact same night watchman Mal put to sleep when we tried stealing Fairy Godmother's wand after coming to Auradon," he snickered.  
  
"That poor man," Evie tried to sound sympathetic, but oh, the irony was just too good.  
  
"...You're going to put him to sleep again?" Dizzy frowned. "Why? Can't we just go in and explain the whole thing to him?"  
  
"Oh Diz, you truly were never meant for The Isle," Mal sighed and lifted a hand, needing no help from her mother's spellbook this time around.  _"Magic spindle, do not linger, make my victim prick a finger."  
_  
The first time, an inexperienced Mal couldn't get it on the first try. Seven months later, the sorceress' every wish was her command, and the tinkling sound of magic filled the air right away. Just like before, they watched their old friend rise from his chair in front of the monitors in a definite daze, eyes glazed over as he shuffled his way over to Maleficent's spinning wheel. One touch, one spark of magic, and again the guard was out cold, curling up on the wheel's display stand with one mighty stretch and even mightier yawn.  
  
"Wow," Dude quipped.  
  
"He's out. Come on," Mal said. "...Evie, I  _see_  you laughing!"  
  
"I'm sorry," Evie giggled.  
  
Mal tried the door, and found it locked.  
  
"...Oh. Right."  
  
She didn't need a spell for that one, just a simple wave of her hand, her magic doing all the talking for her. The gang filed inside, Dizzy taking a curious look at all the things on the camera monitors.  
  
"There's the lamp," Carlos said, pointing to the fifth screen.  
  
"We don't have much time," Evie shook her head. "The witches are probably on their way here right now."  
  
"I'll grab the lamp," Jay told everyone.  
  
"Hurry," Evie urged him. "We'll be in the Gallery of Villains."  
  
Jay nodded and took off without a moment to lose, hurrying down the empty halls in search of the magic lamp a genie once called home and his father once called hell. Evie led the way to the gallery just like old times, following her memories instead of a magic mirror.  
  
"Is this enough mischief for you yet M, or do I owe you some more?" Evie teased over her shoulder.  
  
"I think after tonight I'm swearing off mischief for at least a month."  
  
"That'd be a sight to see," Carlos jeered and scratched behind Dude's ear.  
  
Up the staircase they went, the path familiar to three of them while Dizzy followed close behind. The last time the VKs stumbled upon the gallery and the villains housed within, the sight of their parents looming menacingly was really something to behold. All this time later, it was still something. They knew it was coming, but still they stopped short at the wax figures of Maleficent, Cruella, and the Evil Queen lurking in the dark.  
  
"...Whoa," Dizzy breathed, seeing it all for the first time.  
  
"...Yeah. Whoa," Carlos agreed.  
  
Evie shook her head like trying to shake her mother away, desperately trying to cling to her focus.  
  
"Mal? The spell?" she prodded. "Do we hold hands, light some candles, draw a pentagram on the floor?"  
  
"I've had enough of candles tonight, haven't you?" Mal rolled her eyes. "And no, it's just an incantation. All I need is the lamp."  
  
It was Evie's turn to again hold Winifred's spellbook, and she eyed it like a ticking time bomb, knowing the witches would be drawn to it as surely as the witches were drawn to them. She idly wondered what the average speed on a flying broom was.  
  
"And this spell will really trap the Sanderson sisters inside the lamp?" Dizzy asked.  
  
"Has Mal ever let us down before?" Evie put her arm around her best friend's shoulder and drew her in close.  
  
"E..." the little laugh that escaped Mal was oddly bubbly, not at all like her.  
  
Jay met them moments later with the genie's lamp in his hand, casting several glances over his shoulder like he expected to see the witches right behind him.  
  
"Here you go," he tossed the thing to Mal. "This place has crappy security unless you're a magic wand."  
  
"You're sure the witches will follow us here?" Dizzy worried.  
  
"Diz, what's with the questions??" Mal entreated. "Have a little faith in the Rotten Four, will you?"  
  
"Come on, everybody hide," Carlos implored.  
  
They were literally like small children hiding behind their parents, each of them ducking behind their respective villain with the flourish of the Evil Queen's cape enough to hide both Evie and Dizzy. Funny how it was the first time in their lives that their parents offered any sort of protection. The wait wasn't much at all, but still very agonizing, Mal thinking again and again that she wanted the witches to just kick the doors in and show up already, just to get it over with.  
  
Finally they heard it, the bang of the front doors slamming open and echoing through the cavernous building. Dude's ears perked up automatically, and Carlos made sure to hold him tight.  
  
"...They're here," Dizzy whispered.  
  
None of them had ever really been hunted before, not even on The Isle. They couldn't exactly say they enjoyed the feeling.  
  
Down in the lobby, Winifred hitched her robes to lift a foot and nudge at the slumbering security guard. Not a peep out of him.  
  
"...They are here," she whispered to the other two. "Sniff them out, Mary, you useless worm."  
  
Mary whimpered pathetically, she and her sister still catching heat for letting the kids get away in the first place.   
  
"What shall I do, Winnie?" Sarah asked, eager to please.  
  
"Keep thy trap shut."  
  
They snuck around the watchman as they followed Mary's supernatural nose down the corridors and towards a staircase.  
  
"Now remember Winnie, third time is the charm," she helpfully said.  
  
The island, the party, and now the museum; she figured this just had to be their lucky break, but the narrow-eyed glare Winifred shot her way was her cue to shut up.  
  
"Those pesky little brats have had my precious book for far too long," Winifred snarled as she started up the stairs. "The midnight hour draws near, and dawn will draw close behind. Little Dizzy will be the first to die,  _that_  will teach them not to steal from me!"  
  
"An excellent idea Winnie, truly, truly vicious," Mary nodded admirably.  
  
"The younger, the tastier," Sarah giggled.  
  
Mary traced the scent of them all the way to their hiding place in the gallery, where the four villains standing ominously in the dark room stopped them cold.  
  
"Who goes there?!" Winifred demanded. "Reveal thyself!"  
  
The figures didn't answer. Winifred bravely led the way, creeping further into the room with her sisters cowering somewhat behind her.  
  
"Careful Winnie," Mary pleaded, stooped over in hiding and clutching at robes of green.  
  
Winifred yanked herself loose from Mary's grip with a huff.  
  
"Winnie! She has horns like Master!" Sarah pointed to Maleficent's statue, front and center.  
  
"Another witch, perhaps?" Mary suggested.  
  
Winifred strode right up to Maleficent, looking her dead in the eye.  
  
"Speak, sister! Art thou friend or foe?" Winifred barked.  
  
Still, there was no answer.  
  
"What's the matter, cat got thy tongue?" Winifred climbed the five steps of the pedestal before her and knocked on Maleficent's horned head.  
  
The sound was hollow, and empty.  
  
"...They are but dummies," Winifred realized.  
  
Sarah smiled.  
  
"What fun!" she clapped her hands together.  
  
She took off to have a look at the rest of them, not knowing that the villain kids were hunkered down low behind the figures, holding their breath as Sarah drew near and praying that they could blend right into the dark. Mary joined Winifred in knocking at Maleficent's head, knuckles rapping first at one horn and then another.  
  
"Most curious," she said, poking Maleficent's nose.  
  
"This one looks like you!" Sarah called out to Mary, standing beside the Evil Queen and matching her pose.  
  
Winifred looked over, and gasped sharply at the resemblance.  
  
"Voodoo dolls!" she hissed.  
  
With wide eyes and a fearful  _"Eep!"_  Sarah scurried away from the Evil Queen's statue, back to her sisters.  
  
"There is rival witchcraft afoot!" Winifred said, fingers curling into fists as she descended the pedestal steps.  
  
Mal saw her chance with all three of them standing so close, leaping out from behind her mother's statue and both hands holding the genie's lamp out in front of her, pointed straight at the sisters.  
  
"You got that right," she coldly said.  
  
"There you are!" Winifred exclaimed with a bit of an  _"Aha!"_  
  
 _"I bind your magic, negate your harm, I seal you now within this charm,"_  Mal instantly spoke her spell, with no time to lose.  
  
And the Sanderson sisters just stood there, rather unimpressed. Rather unimpressed as nothing happened whatsoever.  
  
"...What??" Mal said to herself in confusion, shaking the lamp like an old remote with crummy batteries.  
  
"How quaint," Winifred mocked. "My turn."  
  
Like a cat baring its claws Winifred's fingertips uncoiled and struck Mal with magic lightning, blasting her off her feet and through the air before she landed on the floor with a hard thud and the lamp landed close beside her with a clattering clang.  
  
Evie was up in a split-second, fully prepared to race to Mal's rescue before Dizzy grabbed her and yanked her back down into hiding, knowing that Evie would be no match for three witches either. Mal groaned, head pounding and the terrible staticky feeling zipping and zapping all through her body. Winifred made her way to her, standing over the pathetic sight of Mal slowly rolling onto her side and trying to get her senses back.  
  
"And where are thy little friends, hm?" she questioned.  
  
"Right here!!"  
  
Not Evie, but Jay, launching himself from behind his father's statue and rushing the Sanderson sisters in a move he typically only reserved for the Tourney field. Winifred waved a hand like one might wave away a fly, and the floor fell away from Jay, the poor boy rising high off the ground as magic floated him up and up, flailing helplessly in the air.  
  
"Let me down!!" he demanded, fists swinging like he could reach one of the witches from where he floated.  
  
Suddenly it didn't matter if none of them were any match for the Sanderson sisters. Dude sprang forward with vicious barks, biting at Sarah's feet and chasing her around the room. Carlos ran for Jafar's statue and yanked the prop cobra staff out of its hands, coming in swinging at Mary and Winifred.  
  
"Mal!!"  
  
Evie told Dizzy to stay put before racing out from her cover, taking advantage of the witches' distraction with Carlos to check over her best friend. Winifred sent volley after volley of lightning bolts at Carlos, but the small and spry boy and his months of Tourney handily taught him how to dodge.  
  
Evie helped Mal to her feet, picking up the genie's lamp and putting it back into her hands.  
  
"M, what happened??" she questioned.  
  
Mal's wide eyes clearly didn't have an answer.  
  
"I don't know, I...the spell was right, I said it right!" Mal was so confused.  
  
Another shake of the lamp like that might honestly help things, and she tried again.  
  
 _"I bind your magic, negate your harm, I seal you now within this charm."_  
  
Still, nothing. And the chaos was only turning more and more chaotic.  
  
Dizzy was told to stay put, but stay put she did not. She ran to Jay, hopping up in the air to grab his foot and tug him back down to the ground.   
  
"Roast him, Winnie!" Mary cheered, keeping up the positivity as Winifred fumed over missing her mark with each of Carlos' leaps to safety.  
  
Sarah shrieked around the gallery, Dude and his little bat wings getting the best of her. With Jay back in the fight he followed Carlos' lead, making a grab for Maleficent's scepter and coming into the fray armed.  
  
"Someone's going to get hurt," Evie fearfully said, watching it all go down. "And it's not going to be the witches."  
  
 _"I bind your magic, negate your harm, I seal you now within this charm!"_  Mal shouted her spell, trying and failing for the third time. "...Why isn't it working??"  
  
Carlos was hit, falling flat on his back with Jafar's staff clattering out of his hands and Mary clapping triumphantly while Winifred smiled pleasantly and waved away the praise. Sarah came running to hide behind Winifred, who kicked Dude away when he got too close and sent him skidding across the floor with a whimper. And Jay, Jay knew to protect Dizzy, moving in front of her and clutching the scepter tight as the three witches advanced on them both.  
  
Then Evie took Mal's hand, automatically, reflexively, her natural reaction to so many different situations. And as was Mal's natural reaction, she laced their fingers tight, feeling a spark tingling within her palm that she knew Evie was feeling too. Somehow, and someway, the exchange of a single glance between them was all they needed to know just what to do.  
  
 _"...We bind your magic, negate your harm, we seal you now within this charm!"_  they chanted together.  
  
The Sanderson sisters never saw it coming.  
  
Rays of golden light burst forth from the lamp in Mal's hand, rays twisting and snaking through the air as if with minds of their own. Like rope the light curled and coiled around Mary, Sarah, and Winifred, sending them into a panic as the magic pulled them towards the lamp, feet dragging along the floor.  
  
"Winnie!!" Mary cried out, trying with all her might to resist the pull.  
  
"Curses! A thousand curses!!" Winifred growled, she too attempting to dig her heels in and fight against the magic.  
  
Like being drawn to a magnet the Sanderson sisters were powerless, the three of them pulled to the lamp with shrieks and screams before seeming to disintegrate into light themselves, brightly sparkling beams of red, green, and purple sucked into the lamp's spout with one mighty roar.  
  
Everything was quiet then, the kind of quiet that was ironically deafening. Mal's hand trembled, and she didn't quite know why. Evie was holding her breath, but just didn't realize it until the burning in her chest prompted her to let it out in one shaky exhale. Carlos sat up with a groan, and Dude did the same, getting to his paws and shaking himself out.  
  
"What happened?" the dog questioned in a bit of a daze.  
  
"...They did it," Dizzy whispered, peering around Jay. "Mal and Evie did it!!"  
  
Even the girls themselves didn't exactly believe it, cautiously meeting each other's stunned eyes.  
  
"...We did it?" Mal asked.  
  
"...I think we did," a smile was slowly claiming Evie's lips.  
  
"...You helped me with the spell? I didn't even know we could  _do_  that."  
  
"I didn't either," Evie shook her head with a nervous laugh.  
  
"Ding dong, the witches are dead!!" Dude cheered, making a running leap into Carlos' arms.  
  
"Yes!!" Dizzy squealed, jumping up and down.  
  
"So Mal wasn't our secret weapon, Mal  _and_  Evie was," Jay chuckled.  
  
Mal and Evie utterly lit up with smiles, hugging each other like ecstatic little kids.  
  
"We saved Halloween!!" Mal said excitedly.  
  
"We saved  _Auradon,_  Mal," Evie corrected as she pulled away.  
  
"Okay, like we've never done  _that_  before," Mal rolled her eyes and laughed.  
  
They were both rushed by Dizzy, meeting them with a tackle-hug.  
  
"That was amazing! You guys were amazing!" she gushed.  
  
"Let's do hands in the middle!" Dude barked.  
  
"You don't have any hands, buddy," Carlos reminded him with a consoling scratch.  
  
Dude's pouting and defeated  _"Aww.."_  echoed through the Gallery of Villains.  
  
"So long, Sanderson sisters," Jay put his arm around Mal's shoulder and eyed the lamp with a pitying smirk.  
  
"This'll hold them until sunrise," Mal said surely. "And then, we're done with them once and for all."  
  
"And so concludes our greatest Halloween yet," Evie laughed.  
  
"'So concludes'?" Jay raised an eyebrow. "It's not even midnight! We've still got a Halloween party to get to!"  
  
 _"You've_ got a Halloween party to get to," Evie pointed a finger at him.  _"I,_  on the other hand, have had a very long night already and am probably just going to turn in early."  
  
The boys looked utterly appalled at the thought.   
  
"And miss out on all the party food? The candy??" Carlos was in disbelief.  
  
"I'm with Evie," Mal said, feeling a sudden urge to yawn. "It's been a long night, and there's school tomorrow. I chased three ancient witches to the Isle of the Lost and back, that was my Halloween. The party is yours."  
  
Jay shrugged. To each their own.  
  
"Here," Mal handed him the lamp. "You get this back to its exhibit, we'll get the gallery back in shape, and then we're going home."  
  
Jay nodded, straightening his beanie on his head and hurrying off. Evie went to put Jafar's faux staff back into place, and Mal did the same with her mother's scepter, her gaze lingering over Maleficent's face for a moment or two.  
  
"What about the night watchman?" Dizzy asked.  
  
"He'll wake up on his own," Carlos assured her.  
  
"He always does," Evie added, a wicked smirk in place.  
  
"He  _'always'_  does??" Mal repeated, tearing her attention away from her mother's statue. "Twice, Evie! I've only spelled him twice!"  
  
Laughter filled the Gallery of Villains where danger and fear had filled it only moments before. Truly a Halloween night to remember forever.

* * *

 

Dizzy had said she was only going to sit and rest for a minute. Just for a minute. She wanted to be down at the party with Jay and Carlos, after all, but she just needed a quick moment to herself first. And then sitting and resting for a minute somehow turned into her fast asleep on Evie's bed, hands tucked snugly underneath her head and curled up on the pillow.  
  
The girls hadn't even gotten a chance to change into their pajamas before Dizzy went out like a light, Mal sitting on her own bed with her knees drawn to her chest and wearing a little smile as she watched Evie carefully take Dizzy's glasses off and drape a plush blue blanket over their fellow VK.  
  
"Well, I guess I'm taking a raincheck on turning in early," Evie quietly laughed.  
  
"There's room over here," Mal offered.  
  
There was indeed. Evie kicked off her shoes and climbed up next to Mal, leaning back against the headboard and turning herself to rest on Mal's shoulder.  
  
"...So, for once and for all, am I still too Auradon for you?" Evie asked with a tired giggle. "Or did I make this the Halloween to end all Halloweens?"  
  
"There is definitely still plenty of mischief in your blood," Mal nodded, smiling. "And a little magic in there too."  
  
"So it would seem," Evie agreed. "Like I told you earlier in the night, I'm still my mother's daughter. If you thought the daughter of the Evil Queen couldn't get herself into some trouble on Halloween night, you were sadly mistaken."  
  
"Sadly. Man, it is going to be tough to top this next year."  
  
"You'll find a way."  
  
Mal murmured a halfhearted agreement, scooting down on her bed to stretch out and lay on her pillow. Evie, not one to stand for her own personal pillow escaping from her, did the same and snuggled close against Mal.  
  
"I have other pillows, you know," Mal yawned.  
  
"No thanks," as if to spite her, Evie laid her head on Mal's chest and draped an arm over her.  
  
Mal couldn't exactly say she minded. Maybe she'd just have to let Dizzy crash on Evie's bed more often.  
  
"Night, Evie...Happy Halloween."  
  
"Happy Halloween, Mal...see you in the morning."

* * *

 

These naps of his were getting out of hand. Sure, staring at security monitors all night long, your eyes got tired. But waking up again next to Maleficent's cursed spinning wheel with a fog in the brain and a crick in the neck? Like the last time, the night watchman didn't have an explanation, but unlike the last time, at least the alarms weren't blaring.  
  
Still, he knew he had to be sure. Getting to his feet with a stretch, joints cracking and popping stiffly, the time on the security keypad showed it to be just minutes before three a.m. A quick scan of the monitors, of the cameras trained on the likes of Cinderella's glass slipper, the sea king's trident, the bell jar with its fake rose sitting inside to appease curious museum-goers, and the genie's lamp, resting on its pedestal. Except...the watchman stared at the screens night in and night out. Call him crazy, call him sleep deprived, but he  _knew_  that lamp had stood for years on its pedestal with the handle pointed to the left. It didn't bode well for his job security to find it now in its exhibit with the handle pointing to the right.  
  
Wide awake now, the watchman grabbed a flashlight and took off towards the mystic artifacts wing, his footsteps bouncing hauntingly off the marble floor. Maybe it was only his imagination, but he would almost swear there were never any strange goings-on in the museum until those very first villain kids breezed into town.  
  
A night watchman couldn't be afraid of the dark, such a notion was just silly. But a night watchman alone at three in the morning, the infamous witching hour? It didn't matter if technically the calendar read November 1st, everyone knew that the spirit of All Hallows' Eve still lingered through the evening until the sun came back up. So with his flashlight shooting out its brightest beam he padded carefully into the exhibit, swinging the light back and forth, back and forth, like a painter intending to cover a canvas.   
  
There was the lamp, handle turned the wrong way. He set his flashlight down on its end, freeing his hands to pick up the genie's lamp and examine it. Was it a fake? Was he caught in the middle of some nefarious plot to switch out the museum's real magical curios with phonies? No, in lieu of having to go back to his desk and pore through the security tapes, it appeared to his trained eyes that the lamp was indeed the real deal. Just a series of unusual occurrences that could probably be chalked up to the museum staff and their end of the month cleaning. He couldn't say that they'd done a very good job, however, not with the smudges and fingerprints left all over the brass.  
  
He let a shameful  _"Tsk"_  escape into the air. That would never do when the crowds inevitably came tomorrow, wave after wave of people who never seemed to tire of visits to the Museum of Cultural History. And how could Auradon enjoy and marvel at its cultural history if it was dirty and smudged? It just simply wouldn't do.  
  
Carefully, with the kind of intense focus that sent a tongue poking between teeth, he rubbed the long sleeve of his uniform over the brass in a much needed shine and polish, scrubbing little circles over the smudges.  
  
And quickly becoming drowned in billowy, choking clouds of green, red, and purple.


	3. Chapter 3

It was safe to say Mal was fairly disoriented when she opened her eyes. Still in her day clothes, the endtable lamps on, Dizzy asleep across the room, Evie asleep on top of her, one hand lazily woven in Evie's hair.  
  
"Evie??" her voice was scratchy with sleep as she lifted her head, blinking furiously in the light.  
  
Evie didn't stir, and Mal's recollection of the evening came rushing right back to her.  
  
"...Evie," she smiled to herself and closed her eyes again, settling back onto her pillow.

"...Hm?" Evie murmured, seeming to come out of it now. "...Mal?"  
  
She lifted her head too, trying to peer through sleepy eyes at the alarm clock on the nightstand.  
  
"...What time is it?" she curiously wondered.  
  
Mal looked as well, head lolling to the side.  
  
"Almost four, oh my gosh," she answered.  
  
Four in the morning, the world dark and still outside the dorm room windows. Evie sat up, rubbing her eyes with a yawn.  
  
"Ugh, school is just hours away," she grumbled. "...I wonder how everyone at the Halloween party fared when the witches were finally trapped in the lamp."  
  
"It was a party. I don't think being spelled made a difference to any one of them."  
  
Just another way that a VK's Halloween party made a celebration to end all celebrations.  
  
"...Sorry I fell asleep on you, Mal."  
  
Mal sat up as well and stretched herself out before she brushed the hair back out of her face.  
  
"That's okay," she said with a drowsy grin. "We should probably change into our pajamas, though."  
  
"There's an idea," Evie agreed.  
  
Slowly, the pair got up from Mal's bed and shuffled towards the dresser to grab the first pair of cozy PJs they could find.  
  
"...Mal," Evie's shuffle stopped at the desk, where the Sanderson sisters' book of spells lay atop it as if it were an Auradon Prep textbook shut and forgotten for the night.  
  
Mal came up behind her, staring over Evie's shoulder at the menacing looking book.  
  
"...What are we going to do with it?" Evie wondered. "Take it back to The Isle? It's powerless there."  
  
"It's powerless here, now that the witches are gone," Mal pointed out. "In three hours the Sandersons are officially done for, why bother going back to The Isle again?"  
  
"M, we don't know that the witches are the only ones who can use this spellbook. It doesn't matter if this is the good side of the kingdom  _or_  if the Sanderson sisters are gone, if this thing ever fell into the wrong hands..."  
  
Mal's eyes studied the book ever-so-curiously, the way a small child might study a shining toy or a bright balloon.  
  
"...Well, let's just see if the witches are the only ones who can use it," she said musingly, moving out from behind Evie.  
  
Evie who saw the faintest of glimmers in Mal's eyes as she reached for the spellbook.  
  
"Mal, no!" Evie grabbed her by the arm and tugged her away. "Are you crazy?? You can't mess with this thing!"  
  
Mal was looking at Evie like  _she_  was the crazy one.  
  
"I'm the owner of my mother's spellbook. Maleficent, the worst villain in the land. What makes you think I can't handle this one?"  
  
"Because the sisters aren't  _from_  this land. Your mom may be the worst here, but they may be the worst in the world, the universe."  
  
Mal just shrugged.  
  
"They can't be too bad if a handful of kids and a dusty lamp was all it took to stop them. E, all night long I've felt the dark energy coming off of this thing. Now, I'm not feeling anything at all. It's harmless."  
  
The apprehension on Evie's features was crystal clear in the lamplight as she kept her hold on Mal.  
  
"...Evie, what? The witches are villains,  _we're_  villains. Since when are you afraid of evil?"  
  
"Since this thing could seriously hurt you! Or Dizzy??" Evie's voice was strained but hushed as the young girl in question was sound asleep just feet away. "Were you just  _not_  paying attention when Winifred was zapping people with lightning all night? Or planning to suck out souls? They aren't a joke, Mal. Neither is their spellbook. Don't mess with it, alright? Let's just figure out how we're going to get rid of it."  
  
"We should know what we're dealing with first," Mal kept a level head. "We should know what kind of stuff is in here before we decide if it's fit to be in Isle or Auradon."  
  
Evie wasn't convinced, shaking her head.  
  
"...E, trust me," Mal softly said. "When we cast that spell together, we said we were binding the witches' power and negating their harm. That includes their spellbook. This thing is as dead and useless as my mom's spellbook was sitting in her fridge on The Isle. And look at it this way; if I'm wrong, then you get the pleasure of holding it over my head for the rest of our lives."  
  
"...Oh believe me, I will," Evie sighed.  
  
It was against her better judgement, and her better judgement was infallible. But whether innocently or deviously, Mal had used the dreaded  _"Trust me"_. And Evie did trust Mal, so very much. So with Evie on her side, no matter how grudgingly, Mal picked up the heavy tome and took it back to her bed, sitting down on the edge and nestling the book on her lap while Evie sat close beside her.  
  
Nothing like a little early morning reading.

* * *

 

_One hour earlier..._  
  
Sarah Sanderson crouched low to the floor, poking repeatedly at the squishy cheek of the security guard who had fainted dead away at the sight of three witches materializing from smoke.  
  
"Let's play with him," she eagerly suggested.  
  
Winifred brushed off her robes and swatted away a simpering Mary, who tried to brush off Winifred's robes as well.  
  
"'Tis not the time for games, sister Sarah," Winifred viciously narrowed her eyes. "Can you not feel the dawn approaching? We are hours away from dust!"  
  
"Dust," Mary repeated, fretfully biting her nails.  
  
Sarah pouted as she stood back up and fluffed out her dress.  
  
"That meddlesome Mal and insufferable Evie will pay for ruining my night of vengeance," Winifred's clenched fist served as a promise. "I mean... _our_  night of vengeance. Sisters!"  
  
She spun around and commanded the room.  
  
"Yes??" Mary obediently snapped to attention.  
  
"Yes, Winnie?" Sarah did the same.  
  
"Again we are running out of time, and again we shall have to rely on my wits to earn us our immortality."  
  
"Oh, your wits do wonders, Winnie," Mary said reverently.  
  
Winifred waved her words away, staring out across the room in thought.  
  
"Once more we are forced to brew our potion from memory alone," she bitterly realized. "We need a cauldron. We need ingredients."  
  
"Precisely! ...Where do we get those things?" Mary wondered.  
  
The night watchman groaned pathetically on the floor, apparently coming to.  
  
"...Let us ask our flimsy little friend here," Winifred suggested. "Get him on his feet."  
  
Sarah and Mary stooped over and each took an arm, dragging the watchman up with his head rolling like a ragdoll's.  
  
"Up, you oaf!" Winifred stormed forward, waking him with little slaps to his cheeks.  
  
The security guard snapped out of it, stumbling out of Mary and Sarah's hold with a startled shout and falling to the floor again, gazing up at the witches in wide-eyed horror.  
  
"Join me, sisters," Winifred met wide-eyed horror with a grin.  
  
The other two Sandersons took their places at their sister's side, hands raised and at the ready as a spell churned in the air.  
  
 _"Cat had thy tongue,"_  Sarah began.  
  
 _"Now cat's done and dead,"_  Mary chanted.  
  
 _"Open thy mouth and let truth be said,"_  Winifred finished.  
  
The magic of a truth spell did indeed come over the watchman, and Winifred wasted no time in getting her answers.  
  
"Tell me, mortal. Where does one go in Auradon to find a good... _brew?"_  she snickered at her own humor. Sarah and Mary snickered too.  
  
The watchman spoke with a dazed, glassy shine slicked over his eyes, unblinking.  
  
"The old witch's cottage..."  
  
"A cottage!!" Sarah beamed.  
  
"Just like home!" Mary excitedly elbowed Winifred until she was shoved away by her older sister.  
  
Winifred otherwise ignored them.  
  
"And what cottage would this be? What witches has this land seen?" she asked.  
  
"Madam Mim's cottage..." the guard dully answered, magic in control of his words.  
  
"...Madam Mim?" Sarah and Mary whispered to each other.  
  
Winifred looked anxiously to the museum's high windows, knowing that soon the sky would be lightening.  
  
"Where is it?! Where is the cottage??" she huffed impatiently, tapping a foot.  
  
"In the forests to the east..." the watchman droned on. "...Not even an hour from here..."  
  
"'Tis but a broom's ride away!" Winifred clapped her hands triumphantly. "Sister Sarah, where didst thou leave our brooms?"  
  
"...What brooms?" Sarah blankly asked.  
  
Little did she know that Winifred being pressed for time was the only thing that saved her from immediate strangulation.

* * *

 

The sight of a witch on her broom ghosting across a moonlit sky was a Halloween staple. The gnarled handles of hazel wood, the bristles of straw frayed and bent at odd, jutting angles; even in a land of goodness like Auradon a witch's broom garnered a modicum of respect come All Hallows' Eve.  
  
A witch on a wide plastic push broom, however, was a different story.  
  
But if Winifred didn't have the time to strangle Sarah, she didn't have the time to be picky as they stormed the maintenance room at the museum. It was either the brooms, or the floor buffers, and Mary wasn't about to go down that road again.  
  
They ghosted across the moonlit sky, yes, over the forests of Auradon, but the sight of them was less than legendary. Winifred would've pulled her hood tight over her head to stave away embarrassment if she thought anyone was looking. From high above they peered below, deep into the orange and golden trees crisp with the colors of October. The Sanderson sisters had no trouble finding Madam Mim's cottage, it was—all irony aside—a dead ringer for a witch's abode.  
  
The trees were no longer orange and golden around the cottage, but dead and dry, reaching up towards the sisters like crooked, spindly fingers. A black thatched roof sat atop the little house of stone like a witch's hat, and Winifred liked the looks of this place.   
  
The trio touched down in the brittle grass, hurrying to rest their purloined brooms against the side of the house.  
  
"Ah..." Winifred took in a deep breath, as if getting a whiff of something deliciously fragrant. "Feel the power, sisters."  
  
"The power," Mary repeated in awe.  
  
"The magic!" Winifred added.  
  
"The magic," Sarah grinned happily.  
  
"Come, you two. We have a potion to ready. Get the cauldron lit, search the cabinets for ingredients," Winifred strode to the front door and yanked it open.  
  
Dark and dusty on the inside, with rocks and broken odds and ends piled into corners, cobwebs and spiderwebs hanging all over.  
  
"'Tis  _beautiful,"_  Sarah marveled with awestruck eyes.   
  
"And I see the cauldron," Mary said giddily, spying it hanging in the sooty stone fireplace.  
  
Winifred snapped her fingers, magically setting alight the fireplace and all the candlesticks scattered about.  
  
"Brilliant," she smiled. "Now keep quiet, I must concentrate."  
  
"Dead man's chungs!" Sarah helpfully offered, bounding forward.  
  
Winifred whacked her in the stomach with a growl, turning away as Sarah doubled over with a wince.  
  
"I said quiet, you buffoon!"  
  
"...Sorry Winnie," Sarah wheezed, slinking away.  
  
Mary started opening cupboards and cabinets, at first finding nothing but pots and pans and dust, until finally stumbling upon some alchemical ingredients perfect for potion making. Winifred started to pace, wracking her brain while Mary rooted through the cupboards and handed things off to Sarah, things like withered petals of nightshade, eye of newt, raven feathers, tongue of dog.  
  
"Adder's fork?" Mary nervously asked Winifred, trying to jog her memory of their potion but not wanting to disturb her.  
  
"Nonsense, don't be ridiculous," Winifred said bitingly. "No, there was oil of...oil of boil!! ...But how many drops??"  
  
"Two!" Mary said surely.  
  
"Four!" Sarah said at the exact same time.  
  
The two of them exchanged a confused look, Mary suddenly not at all sure anymore.  
  
"Six?" she offered instead.  
  
"Eight?" Sarah frowned.  
  
"Confound it all!!" Winifred shouted. "Why can I not remember??"  
  
"Well it  _has_  been twenty-five years, Winnie," Sarah said.   
  
"We haven't the time to scour the land for my precious book again, and we haven't the black flame candle to keep an eye on the sunrise!" Winifred fretfully paced back and forth.  
  
Mary stood up straight after going to stoke the fire underneath the waiting cauldron.  
  
"...Winnnnie," there was a gleam in her eye and a singsong tone to her voice. "Perhaps bad luck is again on our side."  
  
She went to the window, opening the shutters out into the night and scooting aside the dead and withered rose laying limp in its vase.  
  
"Of course!" Winifred gasped, joining her at the window. "The little wretches have a taste for magic, do they? They'll never be able to resist laying eyes on my book!"  
  
She and Mary peered out across the forest, looking as far as they could towards the horizon, searching for a bright beam of light shooting up to the sky like a beacon.  
  
"'Tis perfect! The power of my book will pull those two brats in, they shall open it, and then—!"  
  
"And then  _that!"_  Mary pointed.  
  
Before their very eyes a grimly glowing pillar of light shot up from the horizon like a geyser of magic, piercing the night.  
  
"Aha!! Curiosity always kills the cat, sisters dear!" Winifred said triumphantly.  
  
"Unless he's immortal," Sarah snickered behind them.   
  
"Victory is mine!" Winifred was already hurrying away from the window. "Make haste, you two! Retrieving my darling spellbook is now but child's play!"  
  
"And then  _we'll_  be the immortal ones!" Sarah said excitedly.  
  
"Precisely, sister Sarah! To the brooms!"  
  
"...What brooms?"  
  
"...Oh shut up, you twit."

* * *

 

Mal and Evie looked on in horror at an entire section of the witches' spellbook dedicated to summoning demons.  
  
"...Okay, so,  _not_  Auradon-friendly," Mal said in stark realization.  
  
"...Then it's back to The Isle?" Evie quietly said.  
  
Mal turned to look at her, tearing her attention away from the spellbook to let her eyes trace the peculiar set of her best friend's expression.  
  
"Evie, I can take the book back myself. Alone," she said firmly.  
  
Evie blinked in confusion.  
  
"Wh...alone??" she repeated incredulously. "Mal, why would you—?"  
  
"The Isle of the Lost practically gives you nightmares," Mal said with an exasperated shrug. "I never thought I'd see the day where you had to go back, but I'm definitely not going to see it twice."  
  
"And I'm definitely not going to let you wander the Isle of the Lost by yourself."  
  
"I'm a big girl, E. Not to mention I can be in and out faster alone than the two of us could be together."  
  
"And what about your mom? Villains waiting to tear you apart for turning good? Giant spiders? It doesn't matter if it's just returning a library book, it isn't as simple on The Isle," Evie explained. "You need me there with you."  
  
"I need you safe in Auradon  _not_  having nightmares and Isle flashbacks," Mal argued. "But at least we both agree that the spellbook needs to go."  
  
Evie saw right through Mal's changing of the subject, but admittedly, she herself welcomed a change too.  
  
"...Well, even with a magic barrier I don't like the idea of this sitting in the laps of the villains," she muttered. "There has to be  _something_  Fairy Godmother can do with it...when she believes us, of course."  
  
"Let's just see what else is in here," Mal flipped through more pages. "Who knows, maybe the book has a self-destruct button."  
  
"Wouldn't that be something," Evie sighed and stood up from Mal's bed.  
  
She idly paced the dorm room, repeatedly casting her gaze over at Dizzy.  
  
"...She's okay," Mal said gently, glancing up from the pages.  
  
"Not until sunrise," Evie denied. "None of us are. Not her, not you, none of us."  
  
"Don't worry about me, I have magic," Mal said a little disinterestedly.  
  
"I worry about you," Evie matter-of-factly said over her shoulder.  
  
"That's sweet. Thank you, E," Mal was distracted as she turned the pages of the spellbook. "Maybe our best bet is just taking this thing back to The Isle. It was there all this time and nothing happened, maybe we just cram it back on that dusty bookshelf we found it on and forget we ever had it. Like it or not, the magic barrier has a solid track record. Unless Jane spazzes out on us again, I don't think any more villains are raiding their closets of evil and escaping the island."  
  
Evie started to nod slowly, still pacing.  
  
"Yeah...I guess that all makes sense," she agreed.  
  
"Then it's settled."  
  
"Not so fast," Evie rounded on her. "There's still the little matter of  _who_  is going to take the book back to The Isle."  
  
Mal snapped the spellbook shut and set it aside, completely unaware of the horrific eye now wide open and blinking slowly up at the ceiling.  
  
"I told you, I've got it covered," she insisted.  
  
"And I told  _you,_  you're not going back to The Isle without me."  
  
"I don't see how you're going to stop me if I choose to, oh, say, sneak out in the middle of the night," Mal said flippantly.  
  
Evie's expression read as rather offended.  
  
"Mal! I'm just trying to make sure you'll be okay!"  
  
"I will be, if you'll just back up and stop making such a big deal out of this!"  
  
Evie had more to say about it. Mal had more to say about it. But when the dorm room imploded into a whirl of wood and flying debris, neither of them got the chance.  
  
Three hags on janitor's brooms had come bursting through the windows at high speed, sending glass and splinters flying like a tornado touching down, ripping the curtains from the wall and blasting the end tables onto their sides where the lamps shattered and plunged the room into darkness lit only by the glow of the moon. The destruction of course woke Dizzy, who fell out of bed with a startled scream. It sent Mal and Evie crashing to the floor, buried in the wreckage of what was once the window and wall between their beds.  
  
"Having a little squabble, are we?" Winifred cackled viciously, hovering on her broom. "Perhaps  _we_  can be of some assistance!"  
  
Evie sat up, pushing debris off of her and coughing crazily in the dust and grit.  
  
"Mal!! Evie!!" Dizzy cried out, hunkered down low behind Evie's bed.  
  
"Ah, there you are," Winifred's eyes lit up as they followed the sound of Dizzy's voice. "After her, sister Sarah!"  
  
Dizzy screamed again and had nowhere to run to as Sarah dove in on her broom and scooped her up with a laugh.  
  
"Mal...Mal!! They have Dizzy!!" Evie yelled.  
  
Mal just groaned on the floor beside her, having taken a not-very-pleasant spill on her head.  
  
"Let her go!!"   
  
Evie leapt up, only to be struck by Winifred's lightning and fired against the wall. In Auradon, the risk of tiny animated birds flying around her head seemed to be a very real one.  
  
"Leave them alone!" Dizzy pleaded helplessly. Sarah closed a hand tight around her mouth.  
  
Winifred spied her spellbook looking right at her from Mal's bed, and her face lit up with a genuine smile.  
  
"Book! Hello!" she gushed. "Mary, fetch my darling little devil!"  
  
Mary drifted her broom close to the bed and picked up the spellbook with care, knowing a throttling was in her future if she so much as crinkled a page.  
  
"Sarah, give me the child," Winifred ordered.  
  
Sarah tossed Dizzy through the air like she was nothing more than a toy doll, with Winifred snatching her up and settling her into place on the broom.  
  
"Evie!" Dizzy got at least that much out before Winifred too clamped a hand tight around her mouth.  
  
Mal's vision swam as she managed to prop herself up on her elbow, and Evie couldn't move with tingles of electricity still coursing a painful path through her body.  
  
"My my, it's been a while, let me recall how Max put this..." a wave of thoughtfulness passed over Winifred's expression. "...Thou hast messed with the great and powerful Sanderson sisters! And  _this_  shall be thy penance!"  
  
She shook Dizzy where she sat, Dizzy whose eyes were squeezed tight in fear, glasses lost and probably broken somewhere on the floor.  
  
"This will teach you to meddle, when little Dizzy is the first to die!" the witch laughed.   
  
"Diz..." Mal lost her balance and toppled flat on her back once more.  
  
Evie tried again, fighting through what felt like paralysis to stand up and come to Dizzy's rescue, but Winifred was merciless, zapping her again and watching her fall.  
  
"Come, sisters! Eternal youth awaits!"  
  
Dizzy squirmed and fought, but Winifred held tight, turning her broom around and zooming out the gaping hole in the wall with Sarah and Mary close behind.  
  
Leaving only a cold wind gusting into the dorm in their wake.  
  
"No!!" Evie's shouts were useless, the witches already shrinking in the distance.  
  
"...Diz?" Mal was starting to sober up, rolling over and getting to her feet. "Dizzy!!"  
  
Evie gazed helplessly out into the night, pressing a hand to her mouth to keep away what felt suspiciously like a sob.  
  
"They took her..." she whispered in disbelief, like she hadn't just watched it all unfold with her very own eyes. "They escaped the lamp and they took her! And now they have the spellbook, Mal!"  
  
"We have to get her back," Mal said simply but fiercely, already punting debris out of the way to find her shoes.  
  
"How??"  
  
There was an aggressive banging at the dorm room door that someone must've figured passed for knocking, interrupting the dire situation and sending Mal storming over to the door to yank it open so she and Evie could pierce the early-morning visitor with identical scathing glares. There was Audrey with her hands on her hips, wearing a scathing glare herself in her pink silk pajamas with a crowd of other girls from the hall gathered behind her. A whole range of expressions passed across everyone's faces, from half-asleep bleariness to grumpy irritation to drowsy concern and even to indifference.  
  
"Excuse me, some of us are trying to sleep here!" Audrey said pointedly, foot tapping on the hall carpet.  _"What_  is with all the...what in the world??"  
  
Mal and Evie guessed her next word was meant to be "noise". But "noise" took a backseat when Audrey cast her eyes into the dorm room and saw an entire back wall blown out. Mal had to follow her gaze and glance at the destruction over her shoulder, like she didn't even realize it was still there.  
  
"Yeah, it's bad, but believe me, there's a perfectly good explanation for all of this," Mal said.  
  
"Which is??" Audrey demanded.  
  
"Exactly."  
  
Evie reached past Mal and slammed the door in Audrey's face, utterly unconcerned with her and the rest of the girls. With any luck, Audrey would weigh her need for beauty sleep against her need to blabber and go running to spill the beans to Fairy Godmother, setting Evie up to have a very stern word with their headmistress about a little matter of taking certain magical emergencies for granted.  
  
"Where could they have gone??" Evie demanded of thin air.  
  
"I don't know...I don't know!" Mal anxiously paced with her shoes now in hand. "They have Dizzy, they have the book, and now they need to brew their potion, but..."  
  
But where in Auradon would three evil witches fancy setting up an HQ? Neither Mal nor Evie had an answer, and every second wasted just took Dizzy further away from them and sealed the fate of Auradon's children.  
  
"...My mirror," Evie whispered then, her eyes going wide.  
  
"Your mirror??" Mal stopped her pacing and frowned. She didn't imagine that now was the best time for Evie to be checking on her appearance.  
  
But Evie paid the questioning glances of her best friend no mind, hurrying over to the contents of her nightstand spilled all over the floor. She found Dizzy's glasses in the mess, bent and one eyepiece shattered, and her heart sunk low.  
  
"Evie?" Mal prodded, no idea what she was up to.  
  
And then she saw that Evie wasn't pulling a mirror from the things haphazardly scattered among the floor, but her  _magic_  mirror. Of course. It stayed completely intact—well, as intact as it had been when it was given to Evie—and she hurried back over to Mal.  
  
 _"Mirror mirror in my hand, show me the three worst hags in the land,"_  Evie spoke her own personal brand of magic to the mirror that worked only for her.  
  
The smoke churned behind the glass like that of a crystal ball, obscuring Evie's view of anything and everything until suddenly it all blew away, revealing a little stone house in a dead and spooky forest, a thatched roof shaped suspiciously like a witch's hat piercing the air.  
  
"Is that...?"  
  
"Madam Mim's cottage," Mal finished Evie's thought. "They never relocated it to The Isle, remember?"  
  
"That can't be right," Evie shook her head. "Camelot is hours from here, there's no way they can make it there before sunrise."  
  
"Unless those brooms come in nitro."  
  
"Magic mirror, show me the forest," Evie commanded.  
  
The view changed on her, the glass reflecting not the cottage, but the land from high above. The girls recognized the sight of the Museum of Cultural History and the outskirts of the autumn forest just beyond it.  
  
"East Riding?" Evie said knowingly, albeit very confused. "Madam Mim's cottage is in the forests of East Riding? Why isn't it in Camelot?"  
  
"The same reason a town called Charmington is home to everyone  _but_  Prince Charming. Since when does anything in Auradon make any sense?" Mal rolled her eyes.  
  
"Okay, fine, it doesn't make sense, but I don't care! Let's just go!" Evie said tensely.  
  
The door was thrown open then by Jay, he and Carlos bursting into the room in their pajamas.  
  
"What the heck is going on??" Jay pressed, the noise and commotion traveling all the way back to the boys' dorm.  
  
"They have Dizzy," Evie said right away, while Mal balanced on one foot at a time to pull her shoes on.  
  
Carlos looked like he'd just seen a ghost.  
  
"...That's impossible," he murmured.  
  
"Is it?!" Evie snapped.  
  
Mal put a hand on Evie's shoulder and shook her head. Now was not the time to take it out on one another.  
  
"How did they get loose?" Carlos asked, completely stunned.  
  
"We don't know, but we can't just stand here talking about it," Mal said urgently. "They have Dizzy and the spellbook holed up in the forest, so if you're coming with us, then go get dressed."  
  
"Of course we're coming with you," Jay firmly said, giving Carlos a little shove as he turned to head out the door. "Let's go!"  
  
Carlos turned tail and followed him out just as hurriedly as they'd rushed in, leaving Mal and Evie alone again.  
  
"...What are we going to do?" Evie fearfully asked, her fire seeming to falter.  
  
Mal, on the other hand, had literal fire on her mind, summoning a palm full of flames and watching them weave around her fingertips.  
  
"Roast some witches," she cooly answered. "...E, she'll be alright. She's our Dizzy, but she's also a villain kid. She'll hold her own until we get to her."  
  
"How long until sunrise?" Evie asked anxiously.  
  
Mal extinguished her flames and felt around in her pockets for her phone.  
  
"Three more hours," she said when she checked the time on the screen.  
  
"They've made their way around every obstacle we've put in front of them," Evie realized. "Escaping The Isle, escaping the lamp...looks like the only plan we have left is stalling."  
  
"...Not the best of plans."  
  
"...It's all we've got, M."  
  
Halloween saw the weather going from cool to cold as midnight passed and November officially took its place. Mal and Evie fought off shivers in their jackets as they left the school building behind to head down the lawn towards Evie's car. The full moon still glowed fiercely up above, lighting the way for them as their feet crunched along the grass. The blue car was just in sight in the school's parking lot when Evie stopped, throwing an arm out in front of Mal to stop her too.  
  
"...Do you hear that?" Evie asked quietly.  
  
Mal hadn't heard a thing until Evie's words made her ears perk up, straining to listen past the breeze in the air.  
  
But soon she discovered it wasn't a breeze at all. It was a song. Faint at first, but then growing stronger, as if with a mind of its own it knew Mal was listening.  
  
 _"Come little children, I'll take thee away...into a land of enchantment..."_  
  
A haunting voice, a beautiful voice, swilling mystically through the air and sending the prickle of magic skittering along the skin of Mal's arms.  
  
 _“Come little children, the time's come to play...here in my garden...of magic..."_  
  
A wave of dizziness washed over Mal, and unbeknownst to her, it washed over Evie too. They wanted to follow that voice. Cross the ends of the earth over and back again and face everything in between just to get to it.  
  
"M..." Evie shook her head like she could shake away the dizziness. "...M, it's a spell, just like when Winifred sang in the gym."   
  
Mal wasn't listening, she was swaying unsteadily on her feet. Completely unaware that those feet seemed to be moving of their own accord. Evie squeezed her eyes shut, fighting to keep her balance.  
  
 _"Come little children..."_  
  
Her eyes opened again in time to see Mal starting a slow shuffle forwards, rather zombified with a blank expression painted onto her face.  
  
"...Mal, don't!" Evie reached out and grabbed her hand.  
  
 _“I'll take thee away..."_  
  
"Don't listen to her!"  
  
Mal's face in front of her was the only thing that kept Evie from being completely pulled in by the thrall herself. She stayed focused on it, focused on Mal to block out the tantalizing power churning around them.  
  
 _"Into a land of enchantment..."_  
  
Mal shook her head just like Evie had, a sort of knee-jerk reaction as if running face first into a spiderweb.  
  
It was Sarah's voice echoing across the night sky, no doubt about it. So Winifred had the lightning, Mary had the uncanny sense of smell, and Sarah was the siren. A dastardly trio if Evie ever knew one. She cupped Mal's face in her hands, turning her to look her right in the glazed-over eyes.  
 _  
"Come little children, the time's come to play..."_  
  
"Hey, it's Evie," she said softly, running a thumb back and forth across Mal's cheek. "Listen to  _my_  voice, not hers. The voice that used to sing you to sleep back when you were having nightmares about dragons, remember?"  
  
 _"Here in my garden...of magic..."_  
  
"...Mal, the Sanderson sisters have already taken enough tonight, they can't have you too!"  
  
Mal staggered a bit, blinking crazily like Evie's words just then were a stinging slap to her face. Evie smiled, seeing the light returning to Mal's eyes.  
  
"...That's my girl," she sighed in relief.  
  
Mal rubbed her eyes as if waking from sleep.  
  
"...After tonight, I need a break from magic," she grumbled.  
  
"...She's drawing them in. Her voice is the spell that's drawing them in," Evie realized, looking up at the early morning sky. "Coming for Dizzy was just their revenge against us for messing with their plans. They aren't going to go after children, they're bringing the children to them."  
  
"Yeah, well, if they plan to have Auradon's kids  _walk_  to East Riding, then time is on our side," Mal pointed out. "...Thank you for snapping me out of it, E."  
  
They heard and saw the boys running down the lawn just moments later, dressed against the morning chill with their Tourney sticks and fencing foils poking out of the duffel bags over their shoulders.  
  
"Let's make this the last time we go up against these hex girls, yeah?" Jay said, stopping to pull his hair back.  
  
"...Three hours until sunrise. It better be the last time," Evie agreed.

* * *

 

Oil of boil, dead man's toe, newt saliva—Dizzy was monumentally happy that Mal's spellcasting was nowhere near this gross. She wasn't monumentally happy that she'd been woken up from a sound sleep only to be kidnapped and tied to a chair at four in the morning, but that was a different story.  
  
A terrible purple mist bubbled from the cauldron hanging over the fireplace, stirred by Mary as Winifred thumbed through her spellbook, a delighted smile on her face like she was catching up with an old friend.  
  
"...Hey, you know, I haven't been in Auradon for very long, really. I'm sure I'm horribly underfed, rotten Isle food still running through my system, I probably don't make a very tasty meal at all," Dizzy said.  
  
Winifred looked up from her book to flash a gleaming grin at her.  
  
"Ah, but revenge is always sweet, is it not? And teaching those little friends of yours a lesson for meddling in other people's affairs will be the sweetest treat of all."  
  
A nervous and fearful Dizzy decided to switch tactics.  
  
"...O-oh yeah? Well, it won't be so sweet for you when Mal and Evie kick that door in and teach  _you_  a lesson!" her voice shook, but the brave intentions were there.  
  
Winifred just laughed a single chortling "Ha!"  
  
"Two modern brats against the seventeenth century?" she mocked in amused disbelief, sure in her powers.  
  
"'Tis hardly a fair fight," Mary snickered.  
  
Sarah was peering over Mary’s shoulder at the potion like she was an excited and curious child herself watching the batter to her birthday cake be mixed.  
  
"How much longer??" she eagerly asked.  
  
"Patience, sister Sarah. Everything must be perfect. Isn't that right, my darling?" Winifred patted the open page of her spellbook. "Thrice time's the charm, after all."  
  
Dizzy had been slyly trying to wriggle herself free, but the ropes around her were tied tight. Countless thoughts of  _"What would Mal do?"_  and  _"What would Evie do?"_ had been pinballing again and again around her head. They mainly involved standing up—ropes and all—and belligerently throwing herself around with a chair strapped to her back, but alas, her feet were tied too. There was no standing to be had. If only she had powers like Mal, if only she could zap herself free. Being woefully trussed up against her will, the little Tremaine was suddenly feeling a newfound camaraderie with Cinderella.  
  
Winifred snapped her book shut and carried it with her as she slunk across the cottage and over to the cauldron, peering into it just like Sarah had. She took a big whiff of it as if it were a delightful stew, apparently savoring the smell of dead man's toe and dash of pox.  
  
"Excellent..." she murmured.  
  
Dizzy hardly thought so, still trying futilely to free a hand or an arm.  
  
"The time is upon us, sisters."  
  
Winifred flipped her spellbook back open, her dagger-like nail tracing down the page and the words of red ink that Dizzy really hoped wasn't meant to be blood.  
  
 _"One final thing and all is done...add a piece of thine own tongue,"_  the witch read aloud from the book.  
  
Dizzy flinched at the awful crunching noise that followed, and when the Sanderson sisters spit into the cauldron, the boiling potion of purple instantly flashed green. Mary set aside her stirring spoon and clapped. Sarah was delighted.  
  
"Behold, sisters! Beauty and eternal youth!" Winifred said in victory. "We have enough potion here to steal the lives of every last miserable child in the land! ...But first, we start with one. One is all we shall need to beat the dawn and stay alive long enough to see our immortality come well at hand!!"  
  
Maybe Dizzy was psychic. Maybe wearing glasses all the time hindered her powers, and now that her glasses were lost and forgotten back in the dorm at Auradon Prep, her gifts had a chance to shine through. Because her earlier threats of the door being kicked in and the sisters being taught a lesson were certainly more than threats now as the door to the cottage caught the business end of Mal's boot and went flying open, jarring dirt and grit from the stone of the wall it slammed into.  
  
"Mal!!"   
  
There was never any doubt in Dizzy's mind that the VKs would come to rescue her. Still, she couldn't help the overwhelming wave of relief that rushed her at the sight of Mal in the doorway.  
  
"You get one chance to let her go," Mal warned, her eyes as vivid a green as the potion the three witches huddled around.  
  
Winifred took the intimidation in stride, laughing and looking to Sarah and Mary.  
  
"Isn't that sweet, sisters dear? From Max and Dani to Mal and Dizzy!"  
  
The other two laughed right along with her, devilishly amused.  
  
"Or else what, you little wannabe?" Winifred demanded of Mal, far from threatened.  
  
"Or else  _this!"_  
  
Mal didn't come to play any games.  
  
She brought her hands close together and hurled a fireball right at the cauldron, knocking it loose from where it hung and sending it crashing onto the stone floor with a deafening clang. The witches' potion spilled all over, hissing like acid at their feet as the trio jumped back and shrieked.  
  
 _"No!!"_ Winifred screamed in anguish, watching all her hard work literally slip through the cracks.  
  
"Guys!" Mal called out.  
  
Evie came rushing into the cottage with the boys right behind her, all of them scanning the scene, assessing the danger.  
  
"Get her out of here!" Mal said.  
  
Again, there was no doubt in Dizzy's mind that her friends would track her down in force to come to her rescue, but still, was she relieved to see them.  
  
With Sarah and Mary clutching one another and sniveling over the loss of their potion, Mal was left to face a livid Winifred, whose fingers were storm clouds brewing the worst lightning storm.  
  
"'Tis the last time you trifle with  _me,_  child!" she furiously promised.   
  
Jay knelt down with a pocket knife to get Dizzy free of her ropes, but then he, Carlos, and Evie found themselves frantically ducking blasts of lightning bolts and fireballs as Mal and Winifred fought.  
  
"Hey! You couldn't wait until  _after_  we were out??" Carlos asked, Mal's magic bouncing off the opposite wall and narrowly missing the chance to singe the poor boy's hair.  
  
Mal's plan had been to distract the witches while the others rescued Dizzy, so no.  
  
It was an awfully small space to be flinging such magic around, and Jay worked as fast as he could before someone got hurt, his knife sawing first at the thick ropes around Dizzy's ankles.  
  
"How did you guys find me??" she asked.  
  
Jay smiled up at her like a big brother would, encouraging her that everything was going to be alright.  
  
"Magic."  
  
"Stand still, you little trollop!" Winifred shouted.  
  
"Your aim is as outdated as your insults!" Mal taunted back.  
  
"Can't you cut any faster?" Carlos fretted, hovering over Jay.  
  
"This is my Isle knife, it's not what it used to be!"  
  
Winifred looked to her mournful sisters, standing uselessly by the pool of spilled potion, still sizzling on the stone floor.  
  
"Fools! Don't let them get away!"  
  
Her presence and biting words sure had a way of putting a pep in their step, for their pathetic witchy wailing shut off like a water faucet and they charged at Evie and the boys with hands outstretched like clawing monsters. Carlos rounded on them, drawing a foil from his bag and standing en garde as he menacingly pointed the tip right at Sarah and Mary.  
  
"Hurry up!" Evie urged Jay.  
  
Carlos' footwork was impeccable as he lunged and parried, keeping the two witches at bay while Jay worked. Finally he got the ropes around Dizzy's feet cut, and moved behind her chair to chip away at the binds there.  
  
Then something set off a deafening  _"whoosh!"_  above them, and everything stopped to let eight heads whip towards the noise, where the wood and thatch of the roof had gone up in flames.  
  
"Whoops..." Mal sheepishly muttered.  
  
"...Aaand now Mal's set the building on fire," Jay rolled his eyes dramatically and frantically hastened the sawing of his dull knife at Dizzy's ropes.  
  
"Fire!!" Winifred gasped, hunkering down and cowering.  
  
"Winnie!"  
  
"Winnnnie!"  
  
Sarah and Mary turned on a dime, casting Carlos aside to join their sister in the cowering as the flames spread. Dizzy squirmed and wiggled crazily as the air grew hot and dangerous.   
  
Evie didn't have time for it. She ran for Madam Mim's cupboard, grabbing a chipped and dusty plate and smashing it to pieces against the side of the cabinet. With one wickedly pointed shard in hand she pushed Jay aside and sliced clean through Dizzy's ropes in one move, freeing the young girl to leap up from her chair with her feet itching to get a move on.  
  
"Mal, she's loose! Let's get out of here!!" Evie called out.  
  
Mal looked over her shoulder to see for herself, to see her friends gathered together and backing towards the door. Just one last thing to do.  
  
 _"Night above and night below, let darkness cloud like blinding snow!!"_  Mal recited.  
  
The VKs hightailed it out the door just as Mal's spell unleashed a thick cloud of black like a smoke bomb being dropped. The darkness filled the cottage, so inky and all-encompassing it smothered the flames out and totally blinded, surrounding the Sanderson sisters in a drowning bubble of pitch black. All the gang could hear as they raced out into the morning was Sarah and Mary's squealing and Winifred spewing curses. Evie's car idled among the trees, and Evie herself turned Dizzy around and around to have a high-strung look at her.  
  
"Are you okay?? Did they hurt you??" she questioned, hands moving all over like they were feeling for broken bones.  
  
"I'm okay," Dizzy nodded fervidly.  
  
Evie pulled her into a tight hug.  
  
"That was way too close," Carlos noted, slipping his fencing foil back into his duffel. "We need to get  _away_  from these witches, like  _far_  away."  
  
"All night long they've been right on our tails," Evie pointed out after reluctantly letting Dizzy go.  
  
"They're literally tracking us with that nose of Mary's," Jay reminded Carlos.  
  
"And my car does not have the gas to drive us to Agrabah," Evie sternly crossed her arms.  
  
Mal was the last to join the huddle, still warily eyeing the cottage over her shoulder.  
  
"People, that darkness spell isn't going to last forever," she told everyone.  
  
"We have nowhere to go," Evie's tone was strained. "The Isle, the school, our very own dorm rooms—there's nowhere the Sanderson sisters haven't followed us tonight."  
  
Mal didn't believe her.  
  
"What do you mean we have nowhere to go?? What about witches not getting into a place when they haven't been invited?"  
  
"Those are vampires," Evie said.  
  
"Well what about not following us into water?"  
  
"Those are bees," Carlos quipped.  
  
"Look, M, they've been right behind us every step of the way. We met them on the Isle of the Lost, they found us at Dragon Hall—"  
  
Evie instantly cut herself short when memory kicked in and reminded her that the Sanderson sisters never followed them  _into_  Dragon Hall. Mal's  _"Race you",_ the dash to the tomb, the witches giving chase, a chorus of hisses as the trio skidded to a stop just before the iron fence, and then...  
  
"...Hallowed ground," Evie remembered. "...The Sanderson sisters didn't follow Mal and I into Dragon Hall because the cemetery was hallowed ground."  
  
Dizzy balked, her eyes wide.  
  
"...You mean to say there's a full moon out and we have to hide in a  _cemetery?"_  
  
Evie reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled her mirror out. GPS didn't have a single thing on her family heirloom.  
  
 _"Mirror mirror, here's your test: show me where all souls go to rest,"_  she said.  
  
Mal peeked over her best friend's shoulder to see what the mirror had to show them.  
  
"You have got to get the zoom on this thing fixed," she muttered.  
  
"Magic mirror, aerial view please," Evie sighed.  
  
And the mirror obeyed, showing her the nearest graveyard nestled on the outskirts of Auradon City, not too far from them at all.  
  
"Everybody in," Evie instructed, pointing to the car.  
  
She climbed behind the wheel with Mal at her passenger's side, Dizzy in the backseat with Jay and Carlos on either side of her.  
  
"Mal? Be my navigator?"  
  
"Always am."  
  
So Evie handed over her mirror, speaking one final command as she gave it to Mal.  
  
"Magic mirror, show us the way."

* * *

 

"...Winnie, perhaps we are not cut out for eternal youth."  
  
Sarah glumly spoke, everything from the tip of her pretty blonde head down to her toes covered in soot.  
  
"Perhaps you should  _shut up,"_  Winifred sneered, an identical picture as the darkness cleared.  
  
Mary coughed beside them, a hand waving away the curling tendrils of black and smoke that still lingered in the air.  
  
"...We're dust," she frowned miserably, already resigned to her fate.  
  
"Not quite," Winifred calmly held up a finger. "Observe, sisters. From Thackery Binx to Max Dennison to this wretched little Mal, over the course of three hundred and twenty-five years these despicable gremlins have set out to destroy my potion. And over the course of three hundred and twenty-five years...there hath always been enough for just  _one."_  
  
She pointed to the cauldron spilled over on its side, with the tiniest pool of sickening green still gathered at the bottom. Mary's frown melted away, an energetic clap taking over her mood.  
  
"Somebody down there likes us!" she cackled.  
  
As if on cue, she and her two sisters bowed their heads then, closing their eyes.  
  
"Master," they reverently said in unison.  
  
Winifred's head lifted first, determination on her face.  
  
"Find a vial," she said. "I shall truly enjoy their torment and suffering when I drain the life of young Dizzy right before their very eyes!!"  
  
"Vicious, Winnie, absolutely vicious," Mary wholeheartedly approved.  
  
"Torment and suffering," Sarah repeated with a smile, saying the words like most people say the words "cookies and ice cream".  
  
She and Mary scuttled off then to search the cottage for a vial or bottle, anything to hold what remained of their potion, anything to deliver Dizzy's doom right to her very lips. Winifred gleefully rubbed her hands together at the thought of it, the most evil of grins stretching her sooty cheeks.  
  
"...After all, 'tis just a bunch of hocus pocus."

* * *

 

The VKs considered it a good sign and one of the night's rare small mercies that they didn't pass hordes of zombified children shuffling in the direction of East Riding as Evie's car barreled down the road. Maybe Auradon parents with their home security systems were left scratching their heads and fighting to get their kids back to sleep, but little did they know, it was truly the best case scenario.  
  
Carlos' jacket was a little big on Dizzy, but her witch's costume from earlier in the night was not the warmest, and Evie already had the heat on full blast. They rode in silence save for Mal's occasional directions as she studied the path the magic mirror had them on. An early morning and empty roads and a villain kid's propensity for rule-breaking all combined to make Evie's current mentality something akin to  _"Speed limits? What speed limits?"_  and she zoomed along with determination. Despite the urgency of their situation, the terrible earliness and the steady hum of the car made Dizzy's eyes heavy, made her lazily slump over onto Jay's shoulder and fight to keep them open. If no one knew any better, the car ride could've passed for peaceful.  
  
"...There," Mal's eyes saw it in the dark before Evie's headlights passed over it, the ornate fencing of the graveyard coming into view.  
  
The full moon seemed to hang directly overhead, and even though the tombstones and markers beyond the fence weren't cracked and uneven like those on The Isle, still they reminded the VKs a little too much of teeth jutting up from the jaw of some great creature buried beneath the earth.  
  
"...Okay, let's head in," Evie said.  
  
The sudden silence of the engine shutting off jolted Dizzy back into reality, and she groggily lifted her head.  
  
"...Can't we stay where it's warm until the witches come to get us?" she murmured.  
  
"Come on, Diz," Jay unbuckled his seatbelt and urged her along.  
  
They all piled out, with Evie popping the trunk to let the boys grab their bags before dropping her keys into her jacket pocket. Mal led the way into the cemetery, the gate creaking ominously on its hinges as they all pushed it aside on their way in.  
  
"You guys, I think next Halloween we should just stay in and watch movies," Dizzy yawned.  
  
"Blankets and popcorn all around," Carlos laughed a little.  
  
"I'll take her up on that," Mal said, watching the moon. "Settle in, everyone."  
  
Dizzy took a seat on the cold and hard ground, shoving her hands into the pockets of Carlos' jacket.  
  
"...So we're stalling?" Jay clarified. He really didn't want that to be their only plan.  
  
Mal just nodded, silent.  
  
"Could anyone else use a nap?" Dizzy again yawned.  
  
In spite of everything, she still managed to bring a warm smile to Evie's face.  
  
Mal walked over to quietly take Evie's hand, leading her off a little ways and keeping Dizzy with the boys.  
  
"Help me fight the Sanderson sisters," Mal said.  
  
Evie stared at her as if she'd suddenly sprouted wings.  
  
"Wh—...me??"  
  
"I couldn't trap them at the museum until you and I joined forces," Mal reminded her. "E, we're stronger together."  
  
Evie shook her head.  
  
"That was one time, Mal. I just don't have the talent for magic that you do. I have my mirror,  _maybe_  a knack for potions with how well I do in chemistry, but that's it."  
  
"No, it isn't it," now Mal was the one shaking her head. "Ever since we came to Auradon I've been growing more and more in tune with magic. I can feel it in my chest, on my skin, and sometimes I can feel it around  _you,_ Evie. Back at the museum, I could definitely feel it around you."  
  
"I'm no sorceress," Evie still denied. "You can cast the spells, and summon the fire, and even rewrite your mother's spellbook, but I can't do any of that."  
  
"Yes you can," Mal insisted. "You just haven't needed to try. Magic is simple, Evie. All you have to do is want something, and then let yourself have it. You want to give the Sanderson sisters exactly what they have coming to them, yeah?"  
  
"...Yeah, I do."  
  
"...Then let yourself have it."  
  
Dizzy's sharp gasp cut through the still air like a knife.  
  
"Mal! Evie!!" she shrieked.  
  
All night long the witches had been their shadow, always just a step or two behind no matter where the VKs went or how much of a head start they vied for. Now, the trio cast their literal shadows upon them as they sailed in under the light of the moon, hovering high above with cloaks fluttering like ghosts.  
  
"I thought they couldn't get us in the safety of hallowed ground??" a stunned Carlos said.  
  
"Open your eyes, Carlos! They're not  _on_  hallowed ground!" Mal snapped.  
  
Riding atop their brooms, no, they were not.  
  
"This ends tonight, thou miserable little youths!" Winifred shouted from the sky.  
  
"Yeah it does, you miserable old bat!" Mal shouted right back.  
  
Winifred pointed a deadly nail right at Mal.  
  
"Thee and thy friends will pay for daring to make a fool of  _me!"_ she promised. "Sarah, Mary! Bring me the girl!"  
  
With a tilt of their brooms the two spiraled down through the air like birds of prey coming in for the kill.  
  
"They don't touch a single hair on Dizzy's head, got it?!" Evie called out to Carlos and Jay.  
  
Jay smiled like a devious little boy set loose and unrestrained, slipping his Tourney stick out of his duffel and gripping it like a baseball bat.  
  
"You wanna smash some pumpkins?" he grinned wickedly at Carlos.   
  
Carlos mimicked him, getting his own Tourney stick and curling his fingers tight around it.  
  
"Happy Halloween."  
  
They both swung definite home runs as Sarah and Mary came close, making them veer crazily on their broomsticks with identical yelps to avoid being struck. Winifred growled in frustration while she watched, electric sparks charging around her fingers as her piercing eyes locked right onto Dizzy.  
  
If the boys were up to bat, then Mal was pitching fastballs, stepping in and hurling a plume of fire at Winifred when she caught her obvious intentions to zap Dizzy. Dizzy ducked behind a gravestone, keeping low and desperately hoping to stay out of the crossfire.  
  
"Evie, you can do this," Mal quickly said, her eyes hectically darting back and forth between the witches and her best friend.   
  
She saw Evie looking on a little helplessly, wanting to stand firm but not knowing how.  
  
Mary dropped in and made a grab for Carlos' collar, trying to take him high into the sky but only lifting him a few feet off the ground before he wriggled himself free. With Winifred frantically patting out the embers singeing her broom, Mal allowed herself a moment to give Evie her full attention.  
  
"E, you know magic. You cast a spell everytime you speak to your mirror, but magic isn't just spells. It's power, it's will," she took Evie's hand and pressed it to the center of her own chest. "...It's heart."  
  
Evie could feel the quickened pace of Mal's heartbeat under her fingertips as danger flew all around them.  
  
"If you have heart, then you have magic. And I  _know_  you have heart, E."  
  
Sarah and Mary still made like those odious birds of prey, dive-bombing Jay and Carlos with cackles again and again, leveling off and charging them as if they hovered on sharpened spears instead of mere brooms. Evie's head turned to watch it all, desperate to fight alongside her friends.  
  
"Want something, Evie," Mal softly pushed. "Want something and then let yourself have it."  
  
Winifred steadied herself in the air, threatening flames extinguished as she vainly tended to her hair for a brief second. Maybe Evie's eyes couldn't glow green like Mal's, but oh, how an inferno lit to life within them anyway.  
  
"...I want to teach her exactly what happens when you mess with a VK."  
  
With her hand in Mal's, sparks of blue suddenly flickered into existence between Evie's fingers and jumped with static over to Mal's, the two of them touched with a tingling charge. The biggest of smiles took over Mal's features, and Evie felt that heartbeat quickening still.  
  
"Abra cadabra," Mal said. "Go get her."  
  
She let Evie loose, and Evie marched on the warpath to stand and meet the eldest Sanderson head-on.  
  
"Winifred!!" she shouted up at her.  
  
"Yes?" Winifred answered back as if having a pleasant conversation over afternoon tea.  
  
Evie wasn't in the mood for conversation, pleasant or otherwise.  
  
"...Two can play at your game."  
  
In one swift movement she turned the night's tables and zapped Winifred with a single bolt of electric blue, frying her hair to stand even more on end and repaying the favor from the beginning of the evening.  
  
"Yeah!!" Dizzy cheered.  
  
"Winnie!" Mary gasped.  
  
Jay took a swing that would've knocked any pitch right out of the park, sending Mary spiraling crazily through the air as she careened out of control.  
  
"Hey, Sarah!" Carlos called out.  
  
It was a good thing Evie mentioned games. Carlos had a favorite.  
  
He kicked up a rock from the soft ground, balancing it on the end of his Tourney stick before lobbing it at the blonde witch, pelting her dead center and wrenching a pained  _"Ouch!!"_ from her lips.  
  
"Go long, Carlos!" Jay caught on right away, scooping up an even bigger rock and letting Carlos get a running start before he passed it.  
  
Two Auradon Knights versus two Sanderson sisters. The high-stakes game of Tourney was on.  
  
She may have been far, far from divine, but still Winifred had a taste for retribution. Two could play her game alright, and she fired a bolt of green right back at Evie, Evie who leapt out of the way at the very last second.  
  
"Fear not, you bothersome brats! For you shall not die until you've seen Dizzy's short life stolen away before your very eyes!" Winifred cruelly promised.  
  
The witch was intelligent, it was what made her so dangerous. An intelligent one such as herself would certainly possess the foresight to know what happened when you threatened an owner of newfound magic, but apparently, she just didn't care. She merely weaved her broomstick through the volley after volley of blue lightning bolts Evie sent her way like Dude weaved through slaloms at the summer dog show, flying in closer and closer to the girls.  
  
"Take my hand!!" Mal reached out to her best friend as Winifred rocketed near. Stronger together.  
  
Mal was fire. Evie was lightning. Anyone with eyes could've pointed that out even long before the advent of magic came into the two VKs' lives. Forces of nature. Deadly on their own,  _unstoppable_  as one. Evie had just stretched out her hand to Mal when rival lightning struck right at their feet, sending up a spray of dirt and blasting the girls to the ground.  
  
"No!!"  
  
If one had heart, then one had magic. Contrariwise, Dizzy didn't have magic, but she certainly had heart. Heart was what made her ditch the cover of the gravestone to run to the girls, dropping beside them and hoping that they were okay.  
  
"Mal?? Evie??"  
  
Their eyelids fluttered weakly, and it was clear they were breathing. Dizzy sighed in relief, relief that was cut short when Winifred flew upon her with a maniacal wail, grabbing her around the waist and taking off into the air with her.   
  
The boys' impromptu game of whack-a-witch stood ten to nothing when they heard Dizzy's screams, Carlos whirling around with his Tourney stick dropping limply from his hand when he saw Dizzy and Winifred climbing high. Mal got her senses back first, springing up as fast as she could and taking Evie's hands to pull her to her feet.  
  
"Put her down!!" Jay bellowed like it would actually do some good.  
  
Winifred just laughed, hovering before them all with Dizzy in her clutches like a spoiled child clings to a new toy. From the corner of her eye Evie saw the other two Sandersons circling back around, headed straight for the unsuspecting boys with their backs turned to the witches.  
  
 _"Sheaths of green where trees tower tall, like the leaves you too shall fall!"  
_  
No, magic didn't  _need_  to be spells, but that didn't mean Evie didn't have any at the ready. An unseen force knocked Mary and Sarah clean off their brooms, and they dropped like rocks into the cemetery below with frightened screams as the accursed hallowed ground awaited. Two literally down, one to go.  
  
"Trick-or-treat!!" Winifred reached into her robes and brandished a glass flask of noxious green, a noxious green that Mal had thought she'd spilled all over a cottage floor.  
  
"No!!" All four villain kids cried out at the same time.  
  
"Yes!!" Winifred flashed a beaming grin, dropping lower on her broomstick so everyone could have a good look when the tragic events unfolded.  
  
If only Mal had wings. If only she could take flight like the witches and face them on a level playing field, wings beating the air and hands curling like claws as she soared to Dizzy's rescue.  
  
"Believed thee could stop me, eh? Believed a centuries-long quest for my precious eternal youth would end here in Auradon, did you??" Winifred jeered.  
  
"Forget the potions and the soul-stealing, I'm a stylist! I can give you guys makeovers whenever you want!" Dizzy feebly said, her voice shaking in terror as she tried to squirm her way out of the witch's hold.  
  
"Quiet, you!" Winifred uncorked the flask, an eerie white mist bubbling over the top. "Today, you die, and tomorrow, I live!!"  
  
Dizzy's frightened instincts let loose a scream where a rational sense of self-preservation would've kept her mouth clamped shut, clamped shut instead of wide open and just waiting for a poison potion to pour down Dizzy's throat.  
  
And then, Mal didn't need wings.  
  
All she needed was a run. A sprint from a dead standstill, a well-timed jump and a well-placed kick off the top of a tombstone to boost her just high enough to take a flying leap at Winifred's broom, snagging the potion bottle away and landing nimbly back on her feet. Here was her level playing field as Winifred looked down at her with her eyes bulging incredulously. Now both had something the other wanted, and now, negotiations would have to be made.  
  
Until Evie snatched the bottle right out of Mal's hands without a single, solitary word, upending the thing at once and downing every last drop of the sickly green potion.  
  
"E,  _NO!!!"_  
  
Mal's very world had just seemed to shatter right in front of her.  
  
"Evie!!" Carlos' sharp gasp cut painfully through him.  
  
"What did you just do?!" Jay demanded, panic setting right in.  
  
Evie didn't seem to pay them any mind. Her determined gaze was fixed only on Winifred.  
  
"...Pick on somebody your own size, you ugly witch," she coldly said.  
  
Winifred shoved Dizzy off her broomstick with a vile hiss, and Jay caught her handily.  
  
"...So, history repeats itself," she muttered darkly, her hardened glare staring right back into Evie's. "Well then, child...so  _be it!!"_  
  
She flew as if on a sonic boom, the sheer force of her fierce dive blowing the villain kids right off their feet. One hand closed in an unbreakable grip around Evie's throat, supernatural strength lifting her off the ground and back into the night.  
  
Fury. Mal was well-acquainted with the feeling of fury. Fury was an old friend that dropped in to say hello when she sat up and saw Evie dangling from the broomstick with Winifred's suffocating hold clenched tight around her neck.  
  
 _"Evie!!"_  
  
Oh, how it was the absolute worst time for Sarah to pop up behind her, hallowed ground apparently as much of a myth as she was as the witch moved unbothered and unscathed through the cemetery. Supernatural strength obviously ran in the family, for when she giggled and grabbed Mal in her seventeenth-century version of a half-Nelson, not even Mal's fury could set her free.  
  
Piercing pain shot through the boys like one of the night's lightning strikes when Mary wheezed with laughter and pinched them both by the ear, watching them twist and turn with agony in ways that harmed more than they helped.  
  
Winifred longed for the chance to wring one of their necks, and with Evie completely at her mercy the temptation surely was there. But alas, she needed the girl's life intact, not snuffed out, and it was only slightly that she loosened her grip. The ethereal white glow slowly building an aura around Evie was truly a sight for sore eyes, a well-earned meal twenty-five years in the making.  
  
Before her was Evie's life force, and Winifred started her feast.  
  
"Well done, Winnie!!" Mary lauded, tugging Jay and Carlos this way and that.  
  
"Save some for me!" Sarah again giggled.  
  
A freezing, sick feeling stabbed deep into the center of Evie's chest. Though she'd never before experienced having a soul sucked out, she knew at once that the ice crushing her lungs was no side effect of it. It was terror. Not terror at feeling her strength, her energy, her very life ebbing away with each purse of the witch's painted red lips, no.  
  
Terror at casting her eyes down and seeing Dizzy cowering again behind a tombstone, absolutely helpless and shaking with tears welling in her eyes as everyone around her suffered and she had no way to stop it. Terror at seeing Mal, Carlos, and Jay losing their fights, watching Sarah and Mary triumph and smirk at one another as they took the lives of her friends as little more than fun toys to play with. Terror at the blur in her vision and the haze over her senses as consciousness slowly but surely began to slip out of her grasp, knowing that as hard as they'd fought tonight, maybe it was all for nothing.  
  
Knowing that her friends could very well lose their lives mere moments after she lost hers and there wasn't a single thing she could do about it.  
  
"...She's dying," Carlos at first whispered to himself, seeing Evie's eyes flutter shut and her body hang listlessly. "She's dying!!"  
  
Evie, dying. Winifred was up there acting like she was slurping down spaghetti and Evie was dying. Mal's body burned with strain as she fruitlessly struggled to break free from Sarah, her eyes flaring emerald green.  
  
The agonizing stiffness was already building in Jay's neck as the angle Mary mercilessly had him bent at gave him a clear view up into the air.  
  
"...Mal! The sky! The  _sky!!"_  
  
The sky. The horizon. The thin line where heaven met earth somehow having tinged pink when none of them were looking. Dizzy peeked over the tombstone at Jay's shout, her heart skipping a beat as she looked for herself.  
  
Sunrise.  
  
Mal's body burned with strain in her efforts to free herself, and now—as the cover of black above them began to turn gray—she burned for real.   
  
Sarah yelped and pushed her away as Mal suddenly became searing hot to the touch from head to toe, magic and not might doing the trick and setting her loose. She didn't waste a single second, whirling around and throwing out a palm that froze Sarah right in her tracks with a flash of green sparkles. Shocked, Mary inadvertently let go of Jay and Carlos, leaving her at the mercy of a second flash of green that rooted her to the spot as well.  
  
"Evie, hang on!" Mal yelled, praying that her best friend could still hear her.  
  
So keen on beauty and youth was she that Winifred had no idea what had happened down below until suddenly she found herself pelted with a shower of rocks, Carlos and Jay again proving their Tourney prowess in their finest hour. Behind them, Mal had a fireball raring to go, haltered only by her need to get a clear, steady shot to avoid catching Evie in the blast.  
  
But no, with shaking hands and a distracted mind buzzing and pounding with a million thoughts and feelings at once, Mal couldn't risk it.  
  
Gray was melting into an even lighter gray as bands of soft yellow and orange painted themselves among the pink, the rising sun seeming to come upon them fast—just not fast enough. A few seconds were bought as Winifred growled indignantly and maneuvered out of range of flying rocks, but a few seconds wasn't enough either. Mal would just have to buy them more.   
  
"Winifred! Down here!" Mal cupped her hands around her mouth to sound her voice loud and clear. "Come join your sisters in a little game of freeze tag!!"  
  
Winifred ignored her, turning back to Evie who was beset by weak, uneven breaths. The glow of life around her had seriously dimmed.  
  
"The dawn of time called, it wants its clothes back!"  
  
This time, Winifred spared a moment to look down and shoot Mal a scowl before again focusing on sucking the life out of Evie.  
  
"You're in Auradon now! Why don't you go see the tooth fairy about getting that buck-toothed sneer fixed??" Mal felt like she was channeling Jay, and doing a rather good job of it.  
  
And if there was one thing Mal never was on the Isle of the Lost, it was a target. Ironic how she'd purposely made herself into one in Auradon.  
  
"Will you  _shut up?!"_ Winifred snarled.  
  
Mal spun through the air as she was struck by her lightning, just narrowly missing a crash into a gravestone as she landed painfully on her side. She forced herself to shake it off, glancing up at the sky. Only the most minuscule sliver of white-gold creeping up past the horizon, barely there at all. Still not enough, none of it was enough. The sun  _just wasn't_  rising fast enough.  
  
 _It's just...it's like Maleficent all over again._  
  
Evie's words from earlier in the night rang clear in Mal's head like she was there on the ground with her, whispering them into Mal's ear.  
  
 _Another fire-breathing dragon here to hurt me, my friends, the people I care about..._  
  
Another Maleficent in the sky, roaring and raging while Mal and her friends watched everything they knew come crashing down around them. All this time, she'd counted that battle as the toughest she'd ever had in her life, the toughest she would  _ever_ have. Seven months later, she wasn't exactly thrilled to be proven wrong.  
  
Mal hung her head, trying her hardest to fight off the flood of helpless tears welling hotly behind her eyes. The sunrise was their only hope. The sunrise was taking its precious time. Evie was dying, the aura around her almost extinguished, and for all her will and all her heart, Mal just couldn't make the sun come up.  
  
There was Evie's mirror underneath her, having fallen from her pocket when Winifred took off with her. The cracked facade reflected Mal's own broken and defeated face right back at her, reflecting every question and cry for help shining in her eyes.  
  
Shining.  
  
 _Magic mirror, shine a bright light!_  
  
Evie's words once upon a time as she'd pushed past her friends and bravely met a charging dragon as it swooped right in on them, face fierce when her mirror obeyed her magic and blinded Maleficent with its power.  
  
That was it.  
  
Palms flat on the cold ground, Mal pushed herself up, taking Evie's mirror with her as she got to her feet.  
  
The boys were out of ideas, out of rocks, really, exchanging heartbreaking looks of helplessness too as they understood stalling for time would do them no good when there was no more time to be stalled for.  
  
Since coming to Auradon, Dizzy had read books about brave and daring heroes rising against evil, rising against villains when all hope was lost and standing tall with nothing at their disposal but their power, will, and heart. Watching Mal stand, Dizzy thought she looked a lot like one of those heroes.  
  
Purple was Mal's color, green played a close second. Perhaps people's very souls and spirits held their own unique colors just as a person's eyes and hair did, for Mal's colors showed in more than just her style, they showed in her magic. Sparks of green, flickers of purple, those were Mal's trademarks with the casting of her spells and the unleashing of her power.  
  
Except here, and now, purple and green had melted into gold, a glittering whirlwind picking up speed around her as she clung to thoughts of Dizzy, Jay, Carlos. Thoughts of Evie. Four hearts as one had been enough to defeat a dragon. Five hearts as one just  _had_  to defeat a witch.  
  
White-gold was no longer only a sliver on the horizon, it was all around them, a blinding aura around Mal like the one that dimmed and dwindled around Evie. Dizzy and the boys had to look away, turn their heads and squint their eyes. Mal was blinding like the sun, and even her friends could feel the thrum of her magic in the air. Winifred gasped above them, her hold on Evie faltering in her shock.  
  
"What sorcery is this??" Panic was in her voice; music to the VKs’ ears.  
  
 _"Darkness take your leave of night, let me now become the light. My magic claims the sun's true might...once and for all, I end this fight!!!"_  
  
Mal threw out a hand, shooting a golden beam of power out across the cemetery. The light struck the frozen Sarah, who went up in light herself; thin beams of purple cracking through her very being like rays of the sun through thick walls of clouds. An explosion boomed through the air, and then Sarah was dust, glittering sparkles of identical purple falling to earth.  
  
"Ohhh, not again..." Mary whined through clenched teeth, her lips frozen in place.  
  
She was next to be hit by Mal's magic, erupting into shafts of red light before bursting into shimmering dust in another boom that rattled the morning.  
  
Winifred let Evie drop, and Jay and Carlos raced forward to catch her as she fell.  
  
"Why you loathsome, detestable,  _festering_ —"  
  
"Rotten, scheming freak?" Mal finished for the last remaining Sanderson. "...It was nice to meet you too, Winifred. Happy Halloween."  
  
The last explosion was the most powerful of all, piercing ears and sending shockwaves that threatened to bowl the villain kids over as a massive shower of green dust rained down around them, catching the early morning light.  
  
Then everything was still, everything was quiet, the transcendent moment of tranquility after the end of a raging storm. Mal was a being of fury no more, light gradually fading from gold to purple to green before vanishing entirely. Pulse pounding a deafening beat in her ears, chest feeling like it would burst and the mere act of breathing suddenly an effort, it was all Mal could do not to drop to the ground and lay there for an eternity.  
  
"...You did it? Mal!! You did it!!"  
  
Dizzy barreled right into her at lightning speed, hugging her so tight for such a small and young person that it didn't do the breathing troubles any favors, but Mal didn't care. She really didn't need any words, she said it all in the way she held and hugged Dizzy back, but the silence was just so—for lack of a better word—grave that it honestly could've used some words.  
  
"You okay?" Mal asked, already having her answer as she stood back and looked Dizzy over.  
  
"I'm okay," Dizzy smiled, wiping her eyes.  
  
"...Good. And hey," Mal tucked a hand under Dizzy's chin, tilting her gaze up. "Love you."  
  
Nevermind the sun—now Dizzy was beaming brightest of all.  
  
"I love you too, Mal."  
  
"Mal!!" Carlos called out.  
  
She and Dizzy exchanged one anxious, wide-eyed glance.  
  
"Evie," they whispered together.  
  
Jay had her head propped up on his lap like Snow White in her glass coffin, peering so intently into her face, watching and waiting for her to breathe. Carlos was the picture of a frightened little boy, unsure of what to do as the girls raced over, unsure of what was happening.  
  
"Evie!!" Mal dropped to her knees, taking her best friend from Jay and cradling her in her arms.  
  
Jay stood, one hand holding Dizzy's and one arm around Carlos' shoulder, moving them back, making some space. And it was as if Evie was simply waiting, for the moment Mal had her Evie's eyes slowly blinked open, her breath escaped in one exhausted sigh, and she peeked up curiously into the somber set of Mal's face.  
  
"...Hi," Evie smiled tiredly.  
  
Mal hung her head for a moment, shaking it back and forth and chuckling under her breath.  
  
"Hi," she said back. "How's it going?"  
  
"Going good," Evie murmured. "...Have a nice Halloween?"  
  
"Could've been better. That was a dumb thing you did, Evie."  
  
"I'm allowed one a month. Especially when it involves saving Dizzy's life."  
  
"And if the Sanderson sisters had taken  _your_  life and made it past sunrise? What then, genius?"  
  
"I knew my friends would stop them. Look how right I was," Evie's tired smile turned haughty.  
  
Mal laughed, holding Evie closer.  
  
"Alright, fine. You get off free this time...but Evie? If you ever die on me again, I'll kill you."  
  
"...Fair enough."  
  
Mal closed her eyes and pressed a longing kiss to Evie's lips, eagerly met with one in return as Evie relaxed in her arms and savored every second. Dizzy squealed, a thrilled and high-pitched little noise that resounded in stark contrast to Carlos playfully rolling his eyes with a chuckle and turning his head away.  
  
"Oh geez," he said impishly, smiling to himself.  
  
"Huh. Mal and Evie," Jay thoughtfully mused. "No one would've seen that coming."   
  
Mal's soft brush of her nose against Evie's was a promise that their first kiss would not be their last. The two had been on tensed high alert all night long—they could spare a moment to let their guards down and lose themselves in one another's eyes.  
  
Dizzy was like a juggernaut of hugs, almost undoing Mal's work of helping Evie sit up when she came speeding into her arms to cling to her in relief.  
  
"You're alright!!" Dizzy said ecstatically.  
  
"More than alright," Evie assured her, rocking her back and forth as they sat. "I gave those witches exactly what they deserved for messing with my Dizzy."  
  
"You're the best," Dizzy's voice was muffled, buried in blue hair. "I love you, Evie."  
  
"I love you too."  
  
"Group hug!" Carlos shouted, throwing himself into a dog pile around Dizzy and Evie that would've made Dude proud.  
  
"We won!!" Jay joined right in without a moment's hesitation.  
  
The boys yelled a series of  _"Woooo!!"_ s into the morning, loud enough to wake the dead just trying to rest in peace underneath them. There were high fives, laughs, cheers, poor Carlos on the receiving end of a victory noogie from Jay, endless hugs all around, piles of autumn leaves thrown into the air like confetti, and Evie winding up helplessly smushed between Jay and Carlos at some point as they showed their relief at having her safe and sound there with them. Quite the cheerful little celebration.  
  
Here was the sun that they could've used earlier, a sphere of light finally showing itself more and more over the line of the horizon as ribbons of the most vivid colors twisted through the sky. The VKs all got to their feet, brushing off dirt and leaves and warming with the rising sun spilling over their faces.  
  
"No way we're topping this next Halloween," Jay grinned but spoke with a heavy sigh, watching the sky's transformation into a canvas of color.  
  
"We upstaged our own Halloween party," Carlos agreed.  
  
"Speaking of, how'd Auradon Prep do after being whammied by witches?" Mal asked, looking to Carlos, knowing he and Jay had headed back to the party after the museum escapade.  
  
"No one even batted an eye," Carlos recalled with a single laugh.  
  
"Figures," Evie said. "And it's probably for the best."  
  
Mal stiffened.  
  
"...Okay, well, eyes will definitely be batted when Fairy Godmother finds our dorm room in pieces," she remembered.  
  
"Yikes," Jay snickered. "So, witchcraft, spellbooks, soul sucking, random property damage...you think this'll get us out of school today?"  
  
Oh, how warm the villain kids were as they all shared in their laughter, warmer still as they huddled together and looked up at the beauty of the morning sky filling with light and color. Evie stood behind her Dizzy, arms draped over the young girl's shoulders and finding no better peace in knowing that she was safe. Jay, Carlos, Dizzy, Evie; Mal spent a good long moment choosing to gaze at them instead of the sunrise. They'd now faced dragons, witches, magic and monsters, and Mal couldn't wait to see what they'd face together next.  
  
No, she decided. She could. This was all she needed right now. An arm curled around Evie's waist, the two of them exchanging a smitten glance, Dizzy smiling up at the sky, Jay and Carlos breathing relaxed sighs as golden sunlight melted the chill away from their bodies.  
  
A new day. A new dawn. Five friends and a sunrise, a morning beginning to mist and not a single care left in the world.  
  
Magic. 


End file.
